Home From the Hill
by Signy1
Summary: Hunterfic. Man truly is the most dangerous game, and the most lethal of his weapons are almost never the ones that confine themselves to inflicting mere bodily harm. The hunt may be over, and Jonathan Kinkaid may no longer be on the island, but he is by no means gone.
1. Chapter 1

Sooner or later, everyone tries their hand at a reworking of 'The Hunter.' This is mine. The title is taken from a line in the poem Requiem by R. L. Stevenson: Home is the sailor, home from the sea / And the hunter, home from the hill.

OoOoOoOo

Bedtime. Gilligan pulled out his handkerchief, folded it neatly, and gagged himself with it before climbing into his hammock. The Skipper pretended not to notice. It was a compromise. After the third time he had managed to wake up, not only his bunkmate, but the other five castaways because he didn't seem to be able to get through a night without repeatedly screaming himself hoarse in the grip of apparently continuous bad dreams, he had announced that he was going to bunk down in his cave so that at least the others could get a full night's sleep once in a while.

The Skipper had had something to say about that, but even after some yelling, literally sticking a sock in it was the best solution any of them could come up with. It was a true compromise, in that it left everybody unsatisfied and the real problem not really solved, but several weeks on, it was still the best they had.

OoOoOoOo

"You mean… you mean it's… ?" Gilligan's eyes looked like saucers, and his voice failed him entirely.

Kinkaid smiled as Ramoo grabbed the sailor by the arm. "Let's make this interesting, shall we?" He looked around, meeting each pair of eyes, variously angry, frightened, or horrified. "A bit of added incentive, as it were. If he can elude me for twenty-four hours, if he can survive that long, you win. I'll call off the hunt, and I'll leave, and you'll never have to worry about me again. If I win… I'll see to it that you're rescued," he said, a sly grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "I'll radio the Coast Guard, and the six of you will be sipping cocktails in Honolulu by nightfall."

Kinkaid glanced at Gilligan out of the corner of his eye as he said that; he hadn't thought the man could get any paler, but he did. Good.

"You can't be—that's my little buddy," the Skipper blustered. "I'd rather stay on this island until doomsday!"

"I want to get back to civilization as much as anybody," Mr. Howell added. "But not at that price! Kinkaid, this is madness!"

"Perhaps," Kinkaid agreed. "But as the one with the gun, to say nothing of the radio tubes, I think that I get to decide what's mad and what isn't. My hunt, and my rules. Good night." He touched a hand to the brim of his hat in ironic courtesy, and the three of them vanished into the jungle.

The Professor took a deep breath. "Gilligan knows every inch of this island," he said, reassuring himself as much as any of the others. "He's fast, he's young and agile, he knows any number of places to hide… Kinkaid won't be able to find him, let alone catch him."

"That's if he even tries to escape," the Skipper muttered. "You heard what Kinkaid said—if he gets Gilligan, he'll make sure that the rest of us are rescued. I wouldn't put it past him to…" he trailed off.

Mary Ann gasped. "He wouldn't!"

Nobody said anything for a long moment. Finally, Mr. Howell, remembering a broken straw in the rain, said, "Oh, my dear girl… have you _met_ Gilligan?"

She shook her head, frantic. "He couldn't! Even if it did help us get rescued. He couldn't just… just let that awful man…"

The Skipper clenched his fists. "I know my little buddy. He wouldn't think twice."

"Of course he wouldn't. This _is_ Gilligan we're talking about," Ginger said. "He has a hard enough time thinking once." Her eyes narrowed. "Besides. He got us all stranded here; he can get us out."

Five horrified stares didn't faze her in the least; Ginger was a professional. Calmly, cool and sweet as ice cream, she met their eyes. "There. We were all thinking it and we were all ashamed of ourselves. Now we can forget it and concentrate on what's important—what we can do to help. There has to be a way we can stop Kinkaid before he hurts anyone."

OoOoOoOo

Gilligan looked at the remains of the steak Kinkaid had insisted he eat. He'd never given much thought to how steak was made before, and, half-sick, he hoped that the cows weren't as frightened as he was. "Look, Kinkaid," he said, and was proud that his voice didn't shake. "I know I can't win here. If you shoot me, I'm dead, and if you don't shoot me my friends don't get rescued. And even if you do get me, you can always say I wasn't a good enough hunt, and then I'm dead and my friends _still_ don't get rescued."

"You're right," Kinkaid said. "You're smarter than you look. Of course, you'd almost have to be."

Insults? Really? Gilligan, who heard worse, on a regular basis, from people whose opinions he actually cared about, ignored that. "So what I want to know is—how good is good enough? What do I have to do to make sure you get my friends rescued?"

"And the brief flicker of intelligence fades," Kinkaid sighed. "So selfless. Stupid, but selfless. Gilligan, you don't honestly think I could let any of them get back to civilization, do you? Why, they'd tell the authorities about our little game, and that would be most inconvenient. No, after I hunt you down, I think my next quarry will be your Professor. Now that I think about it, all that chess could make for some interesting tactics, if he can be persuaded to use his legs instead of his mouth."

Gilligan didn't say anything.

"Pretty little Mary Ann after that, I think. She looks as though she could lead a man on a pleasant chase. As for the others… well, Ginger next, but I think I'll keep her around for a few days first. The other three wouldn't be of much use for anything but target practice, but perhaps I'll keep one of them as a hostage against Ginger's good behavior. Any thoughts as to which one I should pick?" He chuckled. "As if I needed to ask?"

"…You're evil," Gilligan said. "I thought you were just crazy, but you're not. You're evil!"

Kinkaid shrugged. "I'm a hunter. It's the way of the world, Gilligan, and always has been. There are the hunters, and there are the prey, and words like good and evil don't really apply. Now sit down. Save some of that energy for tomorrow."

Mr. Howell knocked at the door, and, as usual, tried to salvage the situation with the application of a generous bribe. And as usual, he was unsuccessful, but not before offering amounts Gilligan could scarcely imagine and knew that he was not really worth.

Ginger was next, charm turned up to eleven, and fared no better. If Gilligan hadn't gulped down the drugged pineapple juice Kinkaid had pushed aside, things might have been different, but he did and they weren't, and she was in tears as she ran back to the relative safety of her hut, trying to scrub the memory of his fingers from her skin.

"How many more of these delightful visits do you think we can expect, Ramoo?" Kinkaid rolled his eyes as the door shut behind her. Ramoo only grunted. "And what more can they offer? I'm not going to change my mind."

"I didn't think you would," said the Professor, entering the hut without bothering to knock.

"Ah, yes. Right on time," Kinkaid said dryly. "And speaking of time, you're wasting yours. I came here for a hunt, and I won't be leaving without one."

"I understand that," the Professor said, just as dryly. "Kinkaid, let's put our cards on the table, shall we? I'm a scientist. Logic and reason hold far more sway over me than mere sentiment." He crossed the room, sat nonchalantly down. He glanced at Gilligan, deeply asleep, but breathing evenly. The dosage had been correct, anyway. At least there was that. "And in addition, I'm a chess player. Surely you're aware that the pawn sacrifice is one of the most elementary of stratagems?"

Kinkaid raised an eyebrow. "Go on," was all he said.

"Taking all available facts into consideration, the plain truth of the matter is that we need your help to get off this godforsaken island, and the price of your help is Gilligan. I'm perfectly well aware that attempting to reason you out of it would be fruitless, and I'm not going to try." He shrugged. "Logically, it seems that six lives can be saved at the cost of one. I'm as sorry for the boy as anyone else, but it's a matter of simple mathematics." Reaching into his pocket, the Professor pulled out a sheet of paper upon which he had sketched a map of the island.

"Now, our camp is here," he said, indicating the spot. Obligingly, Kinkaid leaned in for a closer look. "And here's the lagoon, where you landed. There isn't a great deal of cover there, but he might try to get at the helicopter. But I think it's most likely he'll make for the southeast corner of the island." He pointed. "It's quite overgrown, and there are several caves where he might try to hide. I've marked their approximate location, but of course this isn't drawn to scale."

"I see, Professor," Kinkaid said. "And you're telling me this… why, exactly?"

"I told you," he said. "I'm a chess player, and if one learns anything from chess, it's that long-term strategizing is essential. I want to get off this island. So far as I'm concerned, six lives outweigh one, particularly when one of the six is _me._ If helping you plan your little hunt is the only means to that end, then it would be foolhardy of me to do otherwise."

"Well put, Professor," Kinkaid said, and picked up the map. "And I appreciate your candor. Hmm. The southeast corner, you say? I'll certainly have to keep that in mind."

The Professor's heart skipped a thrilled beat, but Kinkaid wasn't done. "Of course, the fact that the entire area is honeycombed with patches of quicksand is a bit of a drawback, wouldn't you agree?" He smiled. "Come now; you don't really think I'd set off on a hunt without scouting the terrain, do you? Professor, just how stupid do you think I am?" He threw the paper aside, and pulled the Professor to his feet and to the doorstep. "I must applaud your ingenuity, though. Your little performance was subtler, and far more interesting, than either of your comrades'. Good night, Professor. Go to sleep. And tell the Skipper to keep whatever show he was planning to himself, or I'll put a bullet in Gilligan's brain here and now and choose a different quarry tomorrow."

Numbly, the Professor allowed himself to be shoved out the door. Back at camp, the others were waiting for him; he shook his head slightly and looked away. He didn't want to see the Skipper's face as he relayed the message.

OoOoOoOo

Morning came, and for one beautiful moment Gilligan thought that, just maybe, Kinkaid and his hunt had been another one of the cartoonish nightmares he had so often.

"Good morning," Kinkaid said smoothly, putting paid to that little hope. "Care to join me for some breakfast? We'll both need the energy."

It really wasn't fair that his first chance at a plate of bacon and non-turtle eggs in three years was under these circumstances, he thought, eating mechanically. It tasted like cardboard, but Kinkaid was right. He would need the energy.

"Cheer up, Gilligan," Kinkaid said. "You have a fifty-fifty chance."

"I do? Fifty-fifty?"

"Of course! Whether you get it in the heart… or between the eyes." Kinkaid smiled. "Did you have a preference as to which?"

Gilligan clenched his jaw. "I'm not afraid of you, Kinkaid," he said.

"Yes, you are."

"Yes, I am," he admitted. "And I don't care what you do to me."

"Yes, you do."

"Yes, I do. But I'm not gonna let you hurt my friends," he said. "How about this—you pick out a different island. I'll come with you, and you can hunt me there. One island is pretty much like any other, right? What's the difference? Just leave my friends alone."

Kinkaid thought about that for a moment. "Do you really think that I'm going to agree to any such thing? Or that I'd keep my word to leave the others alone, even if I did?"

Gilligan slumped. "… Not really."

"Good. Finish your breakfast, and leave the heroic speeches for the movies." He took a bite of bacon himself, chewed and swallowed. "Your compatriots aren't quite as noble, I'm afraid. You fell asleep before Ginger was quite finished showing me how friendly she could be, and you missed the Professor entirely."

"The Professor?" Gilligan asked, before he could stop himself.

Kinkaid smiled smugly. "Oh, indeed, the Professor. He was here. He was even kind enough to draw this little map for me," he said, showing it off. Gilligan studied it. "What was the phrase he used? Ah, yes. Six lives saved outweighed one sacrificed, particularly when one of the six in question was his. But he did say that he was as sorry for you as anyone else, if it's any comfort."

He laughed at Gilligan's grim expression. "You see? There are predators and prey, my lad, and nothing can change that. Deep down, we've all got a million years of history whispering our names."


	2. Chapter 2

Set during 'The Hunter.' Brief mention is made of a conversation occurring during 'Love Me, Love My Skipper.'

OoOoOoO

Running. Running until his breath was coming in short, agonized gasps and the stitch in his side threatened to tear him in two. Running as sweat soaked through his clothes and dripped into his eyes. The world had contracted into two things—the need to run and the certainty that the thing he was running _from_ was right there, no more than a pace or two behind him. Running, hard and hopeless.

Running until the prospect of being gunned down was almost preferable.

He stopped, checked his watch. Four hours and eleven minutes. That meant there were still almost twenty hours to go, and after those twenty hours, Kinkaid was going to kill everyone else. It was up to him to save his friends, because the Professor was right; six did outweigh one. He couldn't just keep running like a scared rabbit… and he physically couldn't keep running much longer, anyway. That meant he had to think. He had to come up with a plan. He had to be smart.

…And he had to get rid of his shirt, because wearing bright red was a really, really bad way to hide from a crazed gunman. He wriggled out of it, then grinned.

OoOoOoO

The other six castaways, sitting silently in a makeshift jail with Ramoo scowling at them, had long since run out of reassurances for one another. A gunshot cracked, somewhere in the distance.

"Maybe he missed," Mrs. Howell said. "Thurston, darling, you know how hard it is to hit anything with one of those dreadful rifles."

He patted her hand. And lied. "Indeed, Lovey. The boy's so skinny that there's hardly anything _to_ hit. I'm sure he's all right."

OoOoOoO

Kinkaid had followed what was, in retrospect, a somewhat suspiciously clear trail to a tall, slim tree. Somewhat hidden in the crown of foliage, he could just see a flash of what looked like either Gilligan or a large scarlet coconut, and with no further ado, he had taken aim and fired. He had not missed.

All that fell out of the tree, however, was a familiar red shirt, stuffed with leaves and propped up on a piece of bamboo. Surprised, he stared at it for a moment, then a grudging smile spread across his face. "A decoy! Well done, Gilligan," he murmured. "Better than I expected."

Gilligan, meanwhile, had backtracked to a cove. The tide was just going out, which had left the sand damp and perfectly smooth. He turned around, then ran backwards across the beach and back into the jungle on the opposite side, leaving a chain of neat, clear footprints going in the wrong direction. He had done the same thing in several other places, trying to confuse his trail as much as possible. He needed Kinkaid to be confused. He needed to hide. He needed _time_.

And he needed a lot of vines. He pulled out his pocketknife and started hacking.

OoOoOoO

"I've never felt so helpless in my life," Mary Ann said.

"One good thing," the Professor pointed out. "We're still in here. That means that the hunt is still in progress."

"And that's good? Dear fellow, you've been in this dismal cave for too long," Mr. Howell said.

"It _is_ good. It means that Gilligan made it through the night," he insisted, pitching his voice a bit louder than usual in hopes of reaching the Skipper, who had not budged from his self-imposed lookout at the bars of the cage since they had been locked in.

If the Skipper heard him, he never knew. Just then, there was a mad scramble at the edge of the clearing, and Gilligan himself, filthy and wild-eyed, emerged from the underbrush. For a moment, he stood still and looked desperately at them, apparently counting heads. That moment of distraction nearly proved fatal, when Kinkaid squeezed off a shot that missed by so minute a fraction of an inch that he could hear its whistle. He fell backwards, into the water trough, and lay still. The water clouded with red.

The Professor grabbed the Skipper, who had gone a deathly gray, and just in time, too.

Kinkaid approached the water trough, a glitter of unholy triumph in his eyes, which was abruptly quenched, literally as well as figuratively, when Gilligan lunged from the water and pulled him under. His left arm was bleeding, evidently grazed by the bullet, but he ignored it. His eyes flicked back to his friends for a moment, then he took off again, accompanied and warmed by their shouts of "Run, Gilligan! Run! Get away! Go, go, go!"

Some hours later, his rifle cleaned and reloaded, Kinkaid picked up the trail again. It was easier this time; his quarry was obviously nearing the end of his strength. Even without the trampled underbrush, bloody handprints adorned several trees, and it was not difficult to follow them to a shady clearing. A vine was stretched taut between two trees, and he rolled his eyes. "Oh, good heavens," he mocked. "I certainly hope that nothing bad will happen if I should happen to step on this completely non-suspicious vine. Your first try was better. Come on, Gilligan. We both know you're here, and you could at least have the spine to die on your feet, facing me like a man."

OoOoOoO

The castaways heard, somewhere in the distance, a crash. A scream. A gunshot. And then nothing.

OoOoOoO

Carefully, Kinkaid had stepped over the tripwire and into the clearing.

Onto the vine trigger hidden in the grass. The real one.

That trigger released a large log, which was only too happy to obey the law of gravity and land directly on Kinkaid, who screamed as he felt something important snap. The pain was all-encompassing, and terrifying, and not nearly as bad, somehow, as the numbness that followed hard on its heels.

Slowly, warily, Gilligan emerged from the underbrush. Kinkaid, panicked, called out to the man he'd been intending to kill mere moments before. "Gilligan! Gilligan, please—you've got to help me!"

Drawing nearer, Gilligan picked up the rifle that had fallen from the hunter's limp grasp, and looked at it for a moment, as if he'd never seen one before. And then he shouldered it with the unthinking competence of any ex-military man. He didn't favor his wounded left arm; if there was one good thing about tripping, falling, and running head-on into more or less every tree on the island, it was that it taught a person how to handle pain and _keep on going_. "Why would I want to do that?" he asked, with every indication of genuinely wanting to know the answer. His voice was jagged with pain and exhaustion, but calm as a summer sky.

"Please! I'm… get Ramoo. I'm hurt. I need to get to a hospital. I'll tell them where you are. You win. You'll be rescued, all of you. I swear it. Please!"

"Do you really think that I believe that you'd keep your word?" Gilligan repeated back to him, still calm, still distant. "Save the noble speeches for the movies. Where are the radio tubes?"

"In my pocket," Kinkaid grunted. "I think you shattered them while you were breaking my back."

"So it looks like only one of us has the spine to die on his feet after all," Gilligan said, mouth twisting into something that wasn't a smile. "Oh. Almost forgot. In the heart or between the eyes? You asked me, only fair I ask you."

"You have to help me," Kinkaid insisted. "You can't do this to me! I wouldn't really have shot you! Please! Help me, you have to! You're better than this! Please! For the love of God, please! Don't!"

"There are predators and there are prey," Gilligan rasped. "Good and evil don't come into it. And _I'm what you made me be_."

He fired.

OoOoOoO

Slowly, painfully, he trudged back into camp. Ramoo started to his feet, but Gilligan had the rifle trained on him before he could do anything more threatening. "Drop the spear," he barked.

Ramoo did.

"Let my friends out of the cave. Unlock the cage door, and don't try anything stupid."

Carefully, deliberately, Ramoo reached into a pocket, extracted the keys, and unfastened the chain holding the door shut. The other castaways swarmed out and away from him; the Skipper pausing only long enough to snatch up the spear and point it at Ramoo's gut.

Gilligan looked at them, apparently counting heads again, and sighed slightly, relieved. "Ramoo. How many people can fit in that helicopter at a time?

"Helicopter hold two. Only two."

He nodded, unsurprised. "Skipper, Professor, anyone, can any of you fly a helicopter? I can't. Wrongway was showing me how to fly his plane, but I think that's different. And I wasn't too good with the plane, anyhow."

Silence. None of them, it seemed, felt capable of piloting a helicopter.

"The radio tubes got smashed. We can't call anyone. So we'll have to fly back. Once the first of us gets back to civilization, we can send a boat or something back for the rest, but I don't trust his driving."

"Nor would I," the Professor agreed weakly. "Er… Gilligan… is Kinkaid…?"

"Dead," he said briefly. "Are any of you hurt?"

The Skipper felt a hysterical laugh bubbling up, and suppressing it was no picnic. Hunted like an animal for twenty-three and a half hours straight, and his only concern was that one of _them_ might be hurt. If that wasn't Gilligan all over. "We're fine," he said. "We're all just fine. Are _you_ all right, little buddy?"

"Sure," he said, not taking his eyes off Ramoo or his finger off the trigger. "Professor, if we can't fly it, do you think you could use the helicopter parts to make a boat or something? I really don't trust his driving, but I don't think I trust mine, either."

"You kill Boss," Ramoo said. "You kill Ramoo, too?"

"Probably," Gilligan agreed. "Unless anyone has any better ideas?"

It was Mary Ann, of all people, who stepped forward and put her hand on his unwounded arm. "Yes," she said. "Let him go. We let you go, Ramoo, and you fly back home, and tell people where to find us. In exchange, we _won't_ tell anyone what you and Kinkaid tried to do here. Isn't that fair?"

Gilligan frowned. "I don't know about that, Mary Ann. I think it'd be safer to kill him and take our chances. Skipper?"

The Skipper took a deep, feral breath. "I say we kill him, too."

"We're not like that," Mary Ann insisted. "Gilligan! You're not like this. We have to let him go."

His glance flicked back to the Skipper.

"Mary Ann's right. Not in cold blood," the Professor said.

His gaze locked with the Professor's for a moment, then swung back to the Skipper. The dead-eyed calm remained frozen over his face, and the Professor fell silent. He could reason, Mary Ann could implore, anyone could say anything they liked, but there was only one opinion that mattered to him, and they all knew whose that was.

And the Skipper knew it too. He fought back the kill-or-die mindset that had gotten him through two wars, and he nodded grudging assent. "They're right, little buddy," he said. "We're not like them. Let's get this scum out of here."

"Yes, sir," Gilligan said, and gestured to Ramoo with the rifle. "Come on. Back to the lagoon. You're just lucky my friends are nicer than I am. Move!"

They marched him back to the helicopter, and the seven of them watched silently as he took off. It wasn't until the helicopter had vanished into the distance that Gilligan's calm shattered; he began to shake, and the rifle dropped from his suddenly nerveless fingers. He gave them one last desperate, imploring glance, turned, and ran.

Even half-dead with stress and exhaustion, he beat them back to camp, and they found him curled into a fetal position in the far corner of his hut, so deeply asleep that he didn't even stir as the Skipper picked him up and laid him gently in his hammock. Nobody saw as he removed Gilligan's cap and tenderly smoothed the sweat-soaked hair out of his eyes, and he wouldn't have much cared if they had, but he was grateful for the silence and the solitude while he regained his control.

Exiting the hut, he was every inch the confident Skipper he knew they all needed him to be. "It's all right," he said quietly to the others, sitting at their communal table. "He's asleep. That's what he needs most right now, I'd say."

"Right now, I'd say you're correct," the Professor said. "As for tomorrow, I suppose we'll have to wait and see."

OoOoOoO

That night, in their hut, Mr. Howell didn't seem able to settle down. His own words were ringing in his ears, and while that was usually an enjoyable phenomenon, this was not. Mrs. Howell waited it out, sitting at her dressing table and fussing with nothing in particular. She knew her husband. He could not be forced.

Eventually, he cleared his throat and said, too casually, "Lovey, darling, I rather think that I'm going to call off the Howell Annual Fox Hunt. Remember, I was hashing out the details some weeks back? On further reflection, I just don't think it's going to work out."

She frowned, thinking hard for a moment, then remembered. It was during the planning stages of her ill-fated Cotillion; he had suggested following it up with a fox hunt. She had objected; _But Thurston, darling, there isn't a single fox on the island!_ And he had said, with a mischievous grin; _We'll have to improvise. Just put one of your mink coats on Gilligan, and Tally-Ho!_ A joke. Only a joke… albeit one that was no longer amusing in the least. "I think that's probably for the best, Thurston, dear. This weather is far too humid for any such activities, anyhow. It would make us all perspire dreadfully."

"In fact," he went on, as if she hadn't spoken, "In fact, as soon as we get home, I think I'll be withdrawing my membership in the Hunt Club entirely. Utter rubbish, the whole thing. Can't imagine why I ever wasted my time on it."

"Perhaps you should, dear. It will leave you more free time to practice your polo, if nothing else," Mrs. Howell said.

"I should have given it up years ago," he said. "A Howell shouldn't be chasing around a helpless little creature… just standing by, watching while a pack of vicious dogs just tear the poor thing to bits. And for what? What did I ever see in the whole ghastly thing?"

"There, there, Thurston," she said, gently taking his arm and patting it reassuringly. "It's all right, darling. We never so much as set a date for the event; it was all just idle conversation. Nothing to worry about."

"Oh, Lovey," he said, and he pulled her close, put his head on her shoulder. She held him, gently stroking his back, and they stayed like that for some time.


	3. Chapter 3

Gilligan slept through dinner. And breakfast. And most of lunch, but he emerged from the hut before any of them had left the table. He had washed his face and hands, combed his hair, and put on his spare shirt, which, not-so-incidentally, also covered the graze on his left arm. He looked, more or less, like himself again, at least until one looked at his face. But he was trying.

"Um… hi, everyone," he said. "I… um… is there any food left?"

The words—the ones he was trying so hard to make sound normal—were barely out of his mouth before he found himself playing the filling in a girl sandwich. He didn't much like being kissed at the best of times, which these were most emphatically not, and being unexpectedly grabbed didn't improve the situation. He made a strangled, animal sound and, breaking free of their arms, started towards the edge of the jungle before seeming to realize where he was. Breathing hard, he came back, looking ashamed. "Sorry, girls. I didn't… I mean, I… um. Sorry."

"It's all right, Gilligan," Mary Ann said encouragingly. "We didn't mean to startle you. Come on; sit down. We saved you a plate—I'll go get it now." She retrieved it, and set it in front of him. "Here you are. Filet of snapper, and there's some mashed taro to go with it. Skipper caught the fish just this morning."

"Sure did," the Skipper said, a bit too heartily. "Those new fish traps we built worked like a charm."

"Yeah, we're pretty good at building traps," he mumbled, staring at the fish. He shoveled a bite of taro into his mouth, but his throat closed up as he tried to swallow, and he stood up from the table so quickly the chair went over backwards. "Sorry. Sorry; I gotta… um. Sorry." This time, as he ran for the jungle, he didn't stop, and he vanished into the underbrush before any of them could stop him.

OoOoOoO

"I was afraid of this," the Professor said.

"What is it, Professor?" Ginger asked. Someone had to. Mary Ann looked ready to cry at this second failure to comfort their stricken friend; the Howells' interlocked hands were so tightly clenched that their knuckles were white. And the Skipper… somehow, the gut-shot look on his face was making her feel almost sorrier for him than she was for Gilligan.

"Well, obviously, he's been through a terribly traumatic experience. I suspect he's suffering from some form of shellshock."

"What can we do?" she prodded, when he seemed to trail off.

He looked at her, and the unease she saw in his usually calm eyes was not comforting. "We wait," he said. "All we can do is be kind, be understanding… and be patient."

OoOoOoO

Gilligan came back a little before sundown, with a large load of firewood they hadn't particularly needed and nothing to say for himself. He knelt to stack it by the ovens.

"There you are!" The Skipper, who had spent most of the afternoon puttering around the camp, pretending to look for jobs to do while unsuccessfully scanning the jungle for a flash of red, was expansive in his relief. "Wow, that's some stack of firewood. We won't need to gather any more for a while, that's for sure! Good work, little buddy."

Gilligan glanced up at him, and he tried to smile. He really did try.

The Skipper made the swift decision to accept the effort for the deed. "Anyhow, you're just in time for dinner… and I happen to know that Mary Ann was baking pies all afternoon. I know once you get a couple of those down the hatch, you'll feel better."

"Aye aye, sir," Gilligan mumbled, and let himself be propelled to the table. Dinner, on the Professor's instructions, did not feature anything that had, at any point in its existence, had a face. Nothing had been caught or trapped; nothing had died to provide their meal, and Mary Ann had done her best to make the omnipresent coconuts fresh and exciting. For all the good it did, she might as well have not bothered.

"Mmm! My dear girl, this coconut soufflé is positively marvelous," Mrs. Howell gushed. "I declare, I simply don't know how you do it."

"Thanks, Mrs. Howell," Mary Ann said. "Did you try the breadfruit rolls? I tried something new with them. Tell me what you think!" She was, ostensibly, addressing Mrs. Howell. That was not who she was talking to, and everybody knew it. She passed the tray of rolls around the table, instead of across, which would have been far faster.

The Skipper plunked one onto Gilligan's mostly-untouched plate as they went by. "Here; get that onboard," he ordered.

Gilligan took an obedient bite, chewed and swallowed. "It's good, Mary Ann," he said softly, putting it back down on his plate.

The rest of the meal was more of the same; forced attempts at conversation, surreptitious glances at Gilligan, not-so-surreptitious glances at each other as he struggled with the food, keeping his head down and not saying another word. As the excruciating parody of a meal ground to a merciful close, Gilligan suddenly looked up, and bit his lip.

"I… er… I wanted to say thanks, is all. When I checked in at camp… you were all cheering me on. You wanted me to get away, even though Kinkaid said you'd be rescued if I didn't." He swallowed. "So, I… yeah. Thanks."

The Skipper choked, and clapped him on the shoulder. "Oh, little buddy—of course we wanted you to get away! No matter what! Did you doubt that for a second?"

He shook his head. "No, Skipper, never. I didn't doubt it… but it still makes you all the best friends a guy could ever have. A lot of people would've, you know, thought about what would help them, not what would help the other guy." His eyes glittered a bit in the light from the tiki torches. "Not you guys, though. I'm awful lucky."

Ginger smiled at him… a real smile, nothing of the vamp or Hollywood glamor about it. "We're the lucky ones, Gilligan. We got you back. That makes us the luckiest people ever."

He looked troubled. "And, Ginger, I'm sorry I called you a Beatrice Arnold. I didn't understand what you were trying to do. I… I wasn't thinking all that straight."

"Oh, don't be sorry! That's what you were supposed to think," she said, and struck a pose, trying to lighten the mood. "Mata Hari, at your service!"

He attempted another smile, then turned to Mr. Howell. "And thank you for trying to buy him off. That was really nice of you."

"Good heavens, my boy, don't mention it," he said, embarrassed.

He turned his gaze to the Professor, and hesitated, then pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. The Professor's heart sank as he recognized his ill-fated map. "You didn't label the quicksand," he said bluntly. "That was on purpose, right?" _Lie to me_ , his eyes said. _Whether or not it's true, I don't care, just say yes. Six outweighs one… but lie to me anyway, please!_

The Professor cleared his throat. "Yes, that's right. I was hoping that I could convince him that you were likeliest to hide in that vicinity… and that he'd fall into one of the quicksand patches." He looked at the table. "It didn't work," he said unnecessarily.

"Still… that was smart. It was a good try. Thanks," Gilligan said, simply. His piece spoken, he was far away, and silent, for the rest of the evening, his eyes fixed on something none of the others could see. That night marked the beginning of the nightmares.

OoOoOoO

The next day, and the ones after that, were more of the same. He was somewhere else, even, or perhaps especially, when he was within arm's reach. Watching, always watching, waiting for something he couldn't name, seemingly more wary than frightened and more grief-stricken than either. Mary Ann found the shattered remnants of his net by the lagoon one morning; she understood that they would not be butterfly hunting anytime soon, if ever. And it broke her heart.

He was everywhere at once, or so it seemed. If he wasn't gathering firewood, he was carrying water, or tending the salt pans, or digging drainage ditches, or any of the thousand and one other tasks life on the island required. He even resumed fishing and tending the lobster traps; he didn't eat much of his catch, but then, he wasn't eating much of anything. His weight dropped precipitously, and it wasn't like he'd had a great deal to spare.

He answered when spoken to, usually, and he was obviously trying his level best to be as little of an inconvenience as possible. It was not his fault that his silence was louder than his voice had ever been.

"Little buddy, it's too hot to be doing that now. Come on," the Skipper tried, one day, as Gilligan staggered into camp with a bag full of coconuts bigger than he was. "We've got enough coconut to last a week. Let's head down to the lagoon and take a swim, okay?"

"No, thanks, Skipper," he said, not meeting his eyes. "I thought I'd go and dig out the heads; they're starting to get a little whiffy."

"Oh, Gilligan, forget about that for now! We can worry about that tomorrow," the Skipper said. "If you don't feel like swimming, we could go fishing, how about that?"

"No, if you want to go for a swim, you go on ahead. I'll just stay here and finish up the chores."

"Gilligan, you're working too hard," the Skipper said. Subtlety was not working. "You're going to make yourself sick if you're not careful. I _order_ you to take a break, all right?"

"Skipper, I can't," he said. "I just can't. Please. I need to stay busy. If I'm working, I'm not thinking about… I just can't, see? If I really tire myself out, sometimes I can get at least a little bit of sleep at night. I'm sorry, Skipper. I really am. But I… I just can't."

The Skipper did not enjoy feeling helpless, and he was getting all too familiar with the feeling. As he stood there, watching the emaciated figure slip back into the jungle, his hands clenched into defiant fists, he cursed his own uselessness. Being patient and kind was getting him nowhere; his first mate was retreating ever faster into some inner darkness, where the Skipper could not reach him. He was more frightened for him now than he had been during the hunt; there were things worse than death. And if he was any judge, right now Gilligan was living through all of them. His little buddy was real Navy, and a whole lot tougher than he appeared at first glance, but how long could anyone stand up under the punishment he was taking? How long was it even fair to ask him to try?

They were listening to the Dodgers on the radio, some weeks later. No rescue had materialized, and it was tacitly understood that Ramoo had not held up his end of the bargain, but nobody wanted to be the one to say it. Gilligan was still mostly silent, working like a machine and eating like a bird, his sunken eyes increasingly haunted as the days crawled by, and if the cries that the handkerchief could not entirely stifle were any indication, the nightmares were not subsiding; were in fact, if anything, getting worse. Nobody wanted to be the one to mention _that_ , either.

OoOoOoO

"The world of sports was saddened today," the radio announcer intoned. "The wreckage of a helicopter belonging to champion trap-shooter and noted big-game hunter Jonathan Kinkaid was discovered off the coast of Hawaii. While his body was not recovered, that of his assistant was found in the vehicle, and authorities believe that both he and Kinkaid were killed in an accidental crash. In other news—"

Mr. Howell reached for the radio, and turned it off. "Good," he said bluntly. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer person. And, to be perfectly honest, I'd have hated to be rescued by that revolting creature. A Howell, indebted to that barbarian? Pshaw! Not even _Yale_ would have let him so much as cross their threshold!"

Gilligan looked as though he'd been slapped. "I should have tried flying that helicopter after all. I couldn't have done a _worse_ job than he did."

"Don't be an idiot," the Skipper reproved. "You'd just have gotten yourself killed. He and Kinkaid can burn in hell together, and good riddance to them. Filthy murderers!"

"Maybe. I'm going to… uh… I'll be back," Gilligan said, from halfway out the door.

The men looked at each other. "He's not getting any better, Professor," the Skipper said. "He's not… he's not him anymore. And if this keeps up much longer… I've seen this happen before, Professor! Isn't there _anything_ we can do?"

"Skipper, if there were, _don't you think I'd already be doing it_?" The Professor's voice was ragged with emotion. "I don't know what we can do. I don't know if there's anything that anyone could do. I've seen this before, too—and I've seen trained and qualified experts fail to accomplish a cure! Skipper, I'm not a psychiatrist! I don't know how to help him!"


	4. Chapter 4

The dreams that night started about the same way they usually did, with restless thrashing and half-muffled moans coming from the upper hammock. The Skipper, by this point, could, and usually did, sleep right through it, but not tonight. This time, Gilligan, with a shriek that the handkerchief could not contain, twisted so violently that the hammock flipped. He hit the ground with a thud, too tangled in his blanket to break his own fall.

Dazed from the impact, still half dreambound, he tried to sit up, but the blanket was twisted into something between the Gordian knot and a straitjacket. His hands were pinned to his sides; he couldn't free himself, and the more he struggled, the tighter it got. He writhed for a moment longer, then, with a heartrending, primal groan, surrendered and lay still, waiting for a bullet that didn't come.

And that was what finally woke him the rest of the way. Eyes wide and desperate, he finally wriggled free of the blanket and sat up, his whole body heaving as he tried to catch his breath. He tugged the useless gag away from his mouth and let it fall, and buried his face in his hands. "Oh, my God," he murmured, between gasps. "My God." It was a prayer.

As his breathing slowed to something approximating normal, he turned towards the Skipper, who was watching him, helpless and pained. "Sorry about that, Skipper," he said quietly, and he tried to smile. "At least I didn't land on you this time, right?"

The Skipper tried to ignore the lump in his throat. "Never mind that; are you all right?"

"Sure. Yeah, I'm fine. It's not like this is the first time I've fallen out of a hammock, right?" He looked away. "I think I'll just sack out down here for the rest of the night, though. I don't think even I could manage to fall off the ground."

The inevitable knock at the door came, and Gilligan, shame in every line, got up to answer it. The other five, of course, were all out there. "I'm okay," he said, forestalling any questions.

They didn't ask any. They all knew the answers, anyway. Yes, that had been him screaming. Yes, he had had another nightmare. No, he did not want a cup of tea, or a snack, or the loan of Mr. Howell's teddy bear. Yes, he was quite sure he didn't want to talk about it. No, he was not okay. Yes, he was going to tell them that he was.

"I'm sorry, everyone," he said. "Just… you can all just go back to sleep, okay? I'm sorry I woke you."

He came back into the hut, and more-or-less collapsed into a chair. The Skipper lit a candle, and stuck it into the wax-crusted bottle they used as a lamp. The flickering light cast eerie shadows on their faces and against the walls, and it highlighted how drawn—almost skull-like— Gilligan's face had become.

"Gilligan…" the Skipper said after a moment. "Can you ever forgive me?"

"Of course I forgive you, Skipper. Just…"

"Yes?"

"What am I forgiving you for?"

"Oh, for Pete's sake... I'm your captain. I was supposed to be looking out for you, and I failed. I let that lunatic... I should never have let this happen. You're my crew. You're my _friend_. I should have done something. And I'm sorry, Gilligan, I'm so sorry."

"What have you got to be sorry about? There's nothing you could have done. Kinkaid had a gun and a goon; if you'd gotten in his way, he'd've just shot you, and then where would we be?"

"It couldn't be any worse than where we are now," he whispered, mostly to himself.

Gilligan heard him. "Are you nuts? The only good thing about the whole hunt is that he picked me, and not one of you guys. I can run a whole lot faster than you, and the others are just civilians." He shook his head, decisively. "Besides, the Howells aren't exactly spring chickens, and I don't even want to think about if he'd hurt the girls, and we'd all be sunk without you and the Professor to keep us safe. If it had to happen at all, I'm so glad it was me I can't even tell you."

The Skipper shook his head. "You can say that, but these dreams you keep having say different. Everything isn't all right, and we all know it."

"I told you I should go sleep in the cave. If I didn't keep waking everyone up things _would_ be all right. Or a lot more all right than they are, anyway."

"That wouldn't solve anything! In the cave or in the hut, if you're going to keep having these awful dreams, it doesn't matter where you are."

"It would matter a lot to the others if they could get some sleep," he argued. "And I wouldn't have to keep saying sorry when I wake everyone up and get them all worried, and that would matter a lot, too."

"Trust me, everyone's already worried, awake or asleep."

"Aw, gee whiz—that's exactly what I was trying _not_ to do," Gilligan said, defeated. "I'm trying so hard not to bother anyone, Skipper, honest I am, and I couldn't even do that right? I… oh, never mind. It's late, huh? I'm going back to sleep."

"Gilligan—"

"G'night, Skipper," he said firmly, and stuffed the handkerchief back in his mouth before realizing that he hadn't yet blown out the candle. Fanning his hand over it made the flame flicker a bit, but it stayed resolutely lit. Trying to pinch it out only led to a still-lit candle and slightly singed fingertips, and when he instinctively tried to put them into his mouth to soothe the burn, the fabric of course, got in the way.

The Skipper just watched the antics, because he had the feeling that he was supposed to be so distracted by the dog and pony show that he would drop the conversation. He wasn't fooled, if indeed it was intended to fool him at all, but Gilligan was right about one thing at least. It was late. Morning would be a better time for this. "Okay, little buddy. You win. Get some sleep," he said, and blew the candle out himself.

Wrapping the blanket loosely around his shoulders, Gilligan curled up on the ground. They both went back to sleep, or, at least, pretended to go back to sleep until pretense, at some point, became reality. He wasn't there when the Skipper woke in the morning. Not all that unusual, these days. Gilligan had an irritating but undeniable knack for disappearing into the far reaches of the island, more or less instantaneously. The Skipper assumed that it had served him well during the hunt, but it was rapidly becoming a liability.

The Professor didn't know what to do. Fine. He would see this through without the Professor's help. One way or the other, he was going to fix this, before Kinkaid managed to take Gilligan down from beyond the gates of Hell.

OoOoOoO

Gilligan, it transpired, was in the clearing, the one where Kinkaid had met his end. He found himself going there a lot, these days. He'd dug a grave there, and rolled Kinkaid's broken body into it, and had tried to say something respectful, because he knew he should. But not before he had checked all the hunter's pockets, just on the off chance that the radio tubes had survived. They hadn't.

Grass was beginning to grow over Kinkaid's grave, but the outline was still clearly visible, for now. Sooner or later, no one would ever be able to tell by looking that he'd ever been there at all, except for the large stone he had manhandled into place over the approximate location of what was left of Kinkaid's skull. Not to be respectful, and certainly not to memorialize. No, it was intended as a means of weighting him down. Dogging the hatch that was keeping him in.

Visiting the clearing, checking on the grave, had become a habit, a ritual. Not to say an obsession. It reassured him to see it, though. Kinkaid was still down there. He was buried deep, far below, where he could not hurt anyone. He had not escaped. He was still safely trapped in the endless earth, where he would feed the plants and the worms, doing at least one good thing in his twisted life.

Kinkaid was buried. He, Gilligan, had buried him.

He would make certain that he never got out.

He _had_ to make certain that he never got out.

He could not be allowed to hurt anyone. Not ever again.

That was where the Skipper found him.

Gilligan's skinny arms were wrapped around his knobby knees, his head down, in a perfect picture of mute misery. He wasn't crying. He wasn't shaking. He was just sitting there, riding out the waves of unbearable pain, waiting dumbly for release or death.

The Skipper sat down beside him. "Talk to me, Gilligan. This has gone on long enough. _Talk to me_."

"What do you want me to say?"

"What do you need to say? Tell me what that bastard did to you. Whatever it is, it's eating you from the inside out."

"He didn't do anything to me. I… I did it to myself."

The Skipper kept his voice steady. "What did you do, little buddy?"

"I killed him," Gilligan said. "I killed him, don't you understand? I rigged up a deadfall trap, and I shot him with his own weapon after he'd been flattened! I killed him! I'm a murderer!"

"You had to. There just wasn't any other choice. It wasn't murder; it was war, and there's a big difference. It was his life or yours."

"No, it was his life or _yours_! He… He told me he couldn't afford to let any of you get back to civilization. He wasn't gonna get you rescued, even if I did let him get me. And I couldn't let him get me. He was gonna kill everyone! He'd even decided already what _order_ he was going to hunt you in," he said, the words coming fast and faster. This had been bottled up for far too long to stop there. "He told me. He told me, and he _laughed_ about it. First the Professor, then Mary Ann. He said Ginger he'd, um… keep for a while, first. He was just going to kill Mr. and Mrs. Howell straight off, but you were gonna be a hostage to keep Ginger in line 'til he was done with her. If it was just me he wanted, I wouldn't've been so scared!"

The Skipper fought back a wave of violent nausea. "Well. You had even less choice, then. You saved us all; there's nothing for you to feel guilty about."

But Gilligan was shaking his head like a pendulum, eyes squeezed shut. "No. There is. It's not only that I killed him. That's not the bad part."

"What is it, then?"

" _I wanted him to be dead!"_ The words exploded out of him. His eyes were open and aghast, horrified with himself. "And it couldn't just have been that he was bad. There have been bad people here before, and I _never_ wanted them to be dead. Not my double, or that crazy dictator, or the Japanese sailor, or those gangsters, or even the headhunters; I always just wanted them to go away. But not him. I _wanted_ to kill him. I _wanted_ him to be dead. Don't you get it?" His voice broke. "I'm _just like him_. I'm just as bad as Kinkaid."

The Skipper didn't say anything for a moment. "Can I tell you the truth, little buddy? I wanted to kill him, too. I wasn't even the one he was chasing, and I wanted to kill him. And back during the war… I can't tell you how many times I looked at an enemy and wanted them dead. I was glad whenever we sank one of them, and if I could have dragged them back out of the deeps to kill them a second time, I would have. It doesn't mean that either of us are anything like Kinkaid. It just means we're human."

Gilligan was still shaking his head, still unconvinced. The self-loathing had not left his voice. "But where does it end, Skipper? _This_ time, sure, maybe I was doing the right thing. He was gonna kill you all. I thought if I didn't kill him, even if he did go away, he'd probably just find some other people and hunt them, and then it would be my fault for not stopping him when I had the chance, so I'd be a murderer if I killed him and a bigger murderer if I didn't."

The Skipper blinked a few times, trying to follow the logic. "Well… I don't think that's quite how it works, but okay. It still means that you didn't do anything wrong; it just means that you didn't have any other way out of the bind you were in. That we were all in."

"Yeah, but killing Kinkaid… it wasn't even _hard._ And it _should_ have been. I never killed anyone before. I know I should have felt bad, and I didn't. I just walked up to him, and I took his rifle, and I blew his brains out. It was hardly worse than clubbing a fish for dinner. I still don't feel bad, and I'm still glad he's dead. What if it isn't hard next time, either? What if I start wanting people to be dead all the time?"

"There's no easy answer to that one, little buddy. Or if there is, I never found it." The Skipper stared off into the distance, where Guadalcanal had never quite faded. "Men like us, Navy men, with our military training being what it is… part of it means being ready to kill to protect our own. I'm not ashamed of that. And if anyone as terrible as Kinkaid ever landed here again, then, no—I wouldn't hesitate to kill him, either. If that means I won't see heaven, then so be it; better that than seeing innocents like the girls sent there before their time. Do you blame me for that?"

"N-no. No, of course not!"

"Right. Kinkaid was a stone-cold killer. Not military. Not even a hunter, really— just a killer. He wouldn't have stopped with you; he wouldn't have stopped with the rest of us. He'd have kept on hunting, kept on killing, until somebody got him. He was a mad dog. No one who kills for fun could be anything but, and putting him down was the only thing to do."

"If a mad dog bites you, you go mad, too," Gilligan pointed out. "I didn't know I was like him, but I must be. I… I dream about it all the time. Running, being hunted through the jungle, except it's not Kinkaid doing it. It's me. Sometimes I'm hunting the Professor, or the girls, or the Howells. Sometimes it's the guys from home, or my mom and dad, or our pals back in Honolulu… and sometimes… sometimes it's you," he admitted in a hoarse, shamed whisper. He hung his head again; he couldn't bear to see the look of disgust he was certain would be twisting the Skipper's face. He took a ragged breath, and continued.

"And it's like I'm Kinkaid, but I'm me at the same time. And I have the rifle, and you're running, _running_ …" He hugged his knees even more tightly. "And even in the dream, I know I don't want to, I mean, the _me_ part of me doesn't want to, but the other part of me, I'm laughing as I track you down. And always, _always_ , I take the rifle and I line up the sights, and… I'm afraid, Skipper! I'm afraid all the time that… that… that one day it won't be a dream…"

"Oh, Gilligan," the Skipper said softly. So that was what was haunting the poor devil. "That's not going to happen. That's not _ever_ going to happen, okay? I'm your captain, and it's my duty to see to my crew. And believe you me, before you ever came even close to going that bad, I'd put you down myself."

Gilligan looked up, startled. After a long moment, very softly, he asked, "Do you promise?"

"You have my word on it," he said, then chuckled. Voice heavy with affection, he continued, "You knucklehead. I must know you better than you know yourself. You think you could ever be like that snake? You think I'd let that happen to you? Not a chance, little buddy, not a chance. I'd knock you back to your senses long before you could even start to go that wrong. If you can't trust yourself, then trust me, okay? I'm here."


	5. Chapter 5

That promise seemed to help. Gilligan made it through an uninterrupted night's sleep for the first time since the hunt, and if his appetite wasn't what it had been in his heyday, he managed a reasonable portion of breakfast without looking like every bite was made of equal parts razor blades and gall. And, while he was no less assiduous about keeping himself continually occupied vis-à-vis the chores, he did steal a few minutes from checking the fish traps to splash around the lagoon like an otter… again, for the first time since the hunt. And so, for a day or two, it seemed that life would begin to limp its way back to normal; if he was still subdued and wary, the Professor assured them all that it was no more than could be expected. If the dreams were by no means gone, they seemed less violent than before, and he no longer needed the aid of the handkerchief to remain comparatively quiet.

Something crucial had been shattered, and they'd all been trying to pick up the pieces since the moment Kinkaid's helicopter had left the lagoon. Nothing was ever going to be quite the same, but there seemed to be hope, now, that somehow they would, in fact get through this, that wounds would become nothing more than scars, and experiences be reduced to memories.

So, of course, that was the moment the ship chose to make its appearance.

There was no such thing as luck, the Professor insisted. Coincidence, yes. Irony, undeniably. But luck was merest superstition, and no one living in the enlightened days of the late twentieth century had any business believing in it in any way, shape, or form. And he was grateful that he didn't believe in luck, because, as he had to admit to himself, if he _did_ believe, he'd be forced to admit that their collective luck was, as a general rule, less than stellar, and, where Gilligan was concerned, beyond abysmal.

It was a beautiful day, and six of them were on the beach. The Howells, who were only there in a supervisory capacity, had their deck chairs and the radio. The girls were hanging the laundry out to dry; the breeze was crisp and fresh, perfect for drying clothes, and they had taken the opportunity to wash and bleach their bedding, as well. Gilligan was digging for clams like a terrier, and the Professor was mending a torn fish net. The Skipper was gathering firewood in the jungle; there was less driftwood to be found than usual, for whatever reason, and dinner wasn't going to cook itself, no matter how nicely you asked. So it was a matter of looking for deadfall in the jungle, which meant dodging the vines that wanted to get tangled around your feet and the broad leaves that wanted to smack you in the face when you didn't have a free hand to brush them aside, and he wished he had opted for the nets, instead.

It was Mary Ann who first saw it. "Oh! Oh, look, everybody! A ship! Over there! Look! A ship! We're saved!"

Sure enough, far out in the distance, a ship was just barely visible on the horizon. "Quickly!" the Professor shouted. "Grab the sheets! Wave them in! We have to get their attention!"

All six of them lunged for the laundry, but none of their signaling or shouting seemed to reach the ship. It was too far away to see them, perhaps, or just not interested.

"Girls—keep trying with the flags. I'll light the signal fire; perhaps they'll see the smoke. Gilligan—" a thought seemed to strike him, and his eyes lit up. "Gilligan! Go and fetch a gun. Fire a few rounds. They're sure to hear that!"

Gilligan's eyes widened. "But Professor—"

" _DO AS I SAY!_ " he thundered, and ran for the promontory where they kept a pile of dry wood ready for lighting.

Gilligan stood staring after him.

"Are you deaf, boy?" Mr. Howell seized him by the shoulders, shook him. "Go! Get the gun! We have to get their attention somehow!"

"Gilligan _, hurry_ ," Mary Ann wailed. "They're sailing away!"

Snapping back to reality, Gilligan nodded. "Yessir," he mumbled, already running hell-bent-for-leather back to the huts. He found the rifle—Kinkaid's rifle—first, so that was the one he took. It was fully loaded. There was no time to think about what he was doing. He did not want to think about what he was doing. He just grabbed it, slung it over his shoulder by the strap, and raced back to the beach. Facing out into the ocean where he could not possibly hit anyone or anything, ( _There was nothing to hit out there he would not hit anyone he would not hurt anyone please God let him not hit anyone_ ) he squeezed off three quick shots.

Deep in the jungle, the Skipper heard them. Dropping the wood, his heart in his throat, he ran in their direction.

Gilligan worked the action of the gun, automatically doing all the things he had been taught to do, and he all but emptied the clip, but it was no use. The ship was gone. They all just stood there for a moment, peering into the horizon, as if expecting to see it turning back.

Then, all at once, Mrs. Howell's composure broke, and with a sob, she buried her head in her husband's shoulder.

"There, there, Lovey darling," he soothed, holding her close. "It's all right. It was hardly the sort of boat a Howell could be expected to use, anyhow." He glared at Gilligan, still holding the rifle. "Next time we'll just be _a bit_ _faster_ about how we signal them, _won't we_?"

"I'm _tired_ of waiting for next time," Ginger said thickly, tears running down her own face. "Gilligan, how could you? How could you just stand there and let them sail by?"

Mary Ann just hugged her, too choked with disappointment to either comfort or blame, and somehow that was the worst of all.

That was the moment the Skipper arrived, skidding to an abrupt halt in the sand. "What's going on here?" he boomed. "What happened? I heard—"

He took in the scene before him; the distraught women, Mr. Howell's grim expression, the tangled sheets lying helter-skelter on the ground. Gilligan standing stock still, with a smoking gun in his hands and a glassy-eyed expression of dawning horror on his face.

His eyes went huge. In an instant, he was across the beach, and he ripped the weapon from Gilligan's unresisting grasp. "What have you— _Where's the Professor?_ _ **Gilligan, what did you do**_ _?"_

"I didn't want to!" Gilligan yelped. "But Mary Ann saw it! And everyone shouted. But it wasn't any good and the Professor, he said 'Do as I say,' and so I ran back to the huts, and I got the rifle, and I came back here… I'm sorry, Skipper! I tried… but it was too late! I… I didn't mean… I'm sorry!"

The Skipper, aghast, stared at him. The incoherent narrative mapped all too well against the description of Gilligan's recurring nightmares, and the Skipper, for possibly the first time in his life, was completely at a loss. There were no good choices, not anymore. He was drowning, right there on dry land, he was drowning.

All that saved him was the Professor's reappearance on the beach. He was walking heavily, shoulders slumped, defeated, a far cry from his usual quick stride.

"Professor?" the Skipper said, dazed. If he was _there_ , then he wasn't dead. Perhaps Gilligan had missed? There was at least that much mercy left in the world. "What…?"

"It was too late," he said, tiredly, in an unconscious echo of Gilligan's words. "By the time I got the fire lit, the ship was already gone."

"Ship? What ship?" the Skipper asked, looking from one face to another, now completely lost. "What in the name of the seven seas is going on here?"

Mary Ann sniffled. "I saw a ship," she said simply. "Out there. We tried waving flags, and shouting, but they didn't see us. The Professor went to light the signal fire."

"And as an additional sensory stimulus, I instructed Gilligan to fire a weapon," the Professor finished. "Unfortunately, it would seem that none of these were sufficient to alert the ship to our presence."

Just a ship. Just a failed signal attempt. That was all it was, the Skipper reiterated to himself, trying to force his heart to resume some sort of normal rhythm. It had skipped so many beats that he must have been at least a minute behind, and now it was pounding so quickly that it was at least a minute ahead. He took a deep breath. Just a distress signal. That was all it had been. He would never have thought he could be so grateful for another failed rescue attempt.

He looked at the gun in his hands, then looked at Gilligan. His face, never hard to read, might as well have been a flashing neon sign _;_ they both knew exactly what the Skipper had thought had happened. They both knew that they both knew it.

Watching him, the Skipper suddenly also knew exactly how a damned soul would look as the Book of Judgment was slammed shut.

And it was no kind of solution, no kind of strategy, no kind of anything, but Gilligan had nothing left in his mental arsenal but flight. So he turned and ran, just ran, away from the others, away from the tears and the shock and the failure and the anger. Fat lot of good running was going to do now. If he hadn't frozen like a possum, if he had been a bit faster to run when the Professor had first ordered him to, perhaps he wouldn't have been too late, and the ship would have come, and they would have been rescued.

 _Bumbling, incompetent, useless and stupid… and those were his good points._ One more for the list; he wasn't just useless, he was actively dangerous. He'd wrecked another rescue and the Skipper thought he'd gone berserk and killed the Professor while he was at it. So much for the Skipper's assurances that he was not like Kinkaid, that he was not a ravening monster who could be expected to turn on them at a moment's notice. So much for all that 'I know you better than you know yourself' jazz. Or maybe he really did. Obviously, Skipper knew what he was. They both did.

He could not outrun his own thoughts, as hard as he tried, and he did try.

He ended up in the clearing, again, and his face twisted as he stared down at the grave. "All you had to do was play fair," he told it. "That's all you ever had to do. You could have done like you said, and radioed the Coast Guard to pick everyone up, and you could've had me, fair and square and no cheating. I promised, didn't I? All you had to do was what you said you would! We'd all have been better off."

OoOoOoO

The other six, back at the beach, stood in awkward silence for a moment.

"What just happened, Skipper?" asked the Professor.

The Skipper sighed, and indicated the gun. "This happened," he said simply. He might have stopped there, but decided against it; this was rapidly going beyond the point where privacy was any sort of consideration. He described their conversation, briefly but comprehensively. "So today, first of all, he had to pick up this rifle again, just like he'd been dreaming about, and then, when I got here, and saw him with it in his hands—and you, Professor, nowhere to be found—I jumped to all kinds of conclusions." He shook his head, anguished. "I probably just knocked him all the way back to square one."

"It's just as much my fault as yours," the Professor said. "Using the gun really was our best chance at getting their attention; sound carries a long way across water. I thought that he'd be less likely to have an adverse reaction to the sound of the gunshot if he were to wield the weapon himself. Apparently I could not have been more wrong."

The Skipper shook his head, obscurely unwilling to share the blame even that much. "I'd just got him believing that I trusted him, that I knew he wasn't any kind of killer, and what do I go and do? Accuse him of murder. I'm an idiot."

"Well, Captain, standing around here rehashing the blame won't solve anything," Mr. Howell said bluntly. "If we're back to the beginning, then we're back to the beginning, and talking about it isn't going to change anything. Let's go find the boy and see what needs to be done."

The Skipper dragged a deep breath into his lungs. "You're right, Howell," he said. "We'd better split up. Girls, why don't you try looking by the lagoon. Mr. and Mrs. Howell, you stay in camp in case he comes back there. Professor, you go east, and I'll go west."

They all started out in their respective directions. They left the rifle lying on the sand, along with the abandoned laundry, the empty deck chairs, and the radio, still blaring news that no longer interested any of them.


	6. Chapter 6

The island seemed larger than usual, and every shadow more hostile. They had been here before, hunting—no! Not hunting. _Searching._ Searching for their missing friend, searching for the words that would make things right when they found him. It was no less frightening, no less agonized an experience than it ever had been, but there was a numbness to it, too. They had been here before. It was beginning to feel as though they would be playing out this loop indefinitely. Or perhaps not a loop. A spiral, possibly, growing tighter and tighter as it progressed; a hangman's noose of frustration and pain.

Something had to give, and soon.

OoOoOoO

The days passed. He didn't scream in his sleep anymore; he just moaned, or whimpered, and usually wept. The screaming, it seemed, had been denial, had been defiance, and he was past that, now. Once, quite clearly, he had said, "Skipper. Please—you promised—"

The Skipper had lost no time in shaking him awake from that one, but when asked, he claimed that he didn't remember what he'd been dreaming. He was a terrible liar, but he _was_ a stubborn one, and he stuck to his story. He did not remember, and that, he insisted, was that.

OoOoOoO

"These dreams seem to be the linchpin of his current mental state. If we can help him alter his dream narrative," the Professor said, "It would probably be a large step towards snapping him out of this depression."

"That's easy enough to say, Professor," Ginger said. "It isn't as though we can just change the channel in his head."

"Perhaps we can do just that," the Professor said. "Skipper, if I were to use hypnosis—"

"No, I suggested that already. He said that if we want to hypnotize him, we'll have to actually hold him down and pry his eyes open," the Skipper said, bitter. "He said it was bad enough he had to dream about it at night without having to see it during the day, too. I said I'd make it a direct order, and he told me he'd mutiny."

Mary Ann put a reassuring hand on the bigger man's shoulder, because the angry frustration in his voice was not really masking the agony underneath.

The Professor raised his eyebrows. "Well… I suppose it's a good sign that he was capable of expressing his resistance verbally, rather than simply vanishing again." It sounded weak, because it was weak, but it was the only bright side he could see.

"So if he's not going to let you hypnotize him, what else can we try?" Ginger was going to keep this conversation on a useful track if it killed her, because someone had to. There was a problem. They needed to find a solution; that was how it always worked in the movies, and if sheer determination could do it, it would work here, too.

"I've tried to psychoanalyze the poor boy, but he was most uncooperative," Mrs. Howell confessed. Uncooperative was putting it mildly. Sigmund Freud himself would have been hard put to extract anything useful from their therapy sessions; he had three sets of responses, 'Yes, Ma'am,' 'No, Ma'am,' and 'I'm sorry, Mrs. Howell, I don't know,' in various combinations, and not a word more. It was infuriating, really, how readily he acquiesced, doing precisely what she asked and answering every question she posed, while still managing to thwart her at every turn. That sort of stubbornness was simply appalling in someone from his tax bracket.

"What about re-enacting the crime? Would that help? If we restaged the hunt, except make it so that he was able to do something differently?" Mary Ann looked uncertain. "They did something like that on _Old Doctor Young_ , when Tommy Tillerman had gone mad with guilt after his fiancée was killed in a car crash, and he was at the wheel. It turned out that Mark Mitchell had cut the brake lines, so Tommy hadn't really caused the accident after all."

The Professor frowned. "I don't know if that's such a good idea, Mary Ann."

"Well, aren't we trying to get him to see that killing Kinkaid wasn't his fault?"

"Yes, but there are at least two problems that I can see," said the Professor. "First of all, he did indubitably— albeit justifiably— kill Kinkaid. That, however, doesn't even seem to be the issue; if I've understood the matter correctly, his feelings of guilt would appear to stem entirely from his subsequent reaction to the deed. I suspect that a simple restaging of the events would not evoke a different reaction."

"What's the other problem?" asked Mr. Howell.

"Considering his reaction to the mere suggestion of hypnosis, there's absolutely no chance that Gilligan would voluntarily cooperate with a re-enactment of that hunt, and I'm entirely certain that putting him through it involuntarily— with one of us playing the part of the aggressor, no less— would only further damage his wounded psyche," the Professor said.

"If one of us has to play the role of the hunter, he could do some damage of his own. And not just to our psyches," Mr. Howell muttered.

The Professor couldn't exactly deny that part of it, either. "So, we're agreed. It's far too great a risk, on several counts."

"What about that sleeping medicine you mixed up? Perhaps if he takes some of that he won't have any more of those horrid dreams," suggested Mrs. Howell.

"Well," the Professor said dubiously. "I _can_ compound more of that sleeping drug, but that's hardly a long-term solution."

The Skipper looked sick. "You're not seriously suggesting that we just slip him a mickey and hope for the best?"

"Nothing so underhanded. If no better option presents itself, though, we might well wish to consider offering him the option of a full night's sleep," the Professor said slowly. He didn't like the idea any more than the Skipper did, and these drugs were nothing to trifle with. In addition, he didn't even know whether or not they would suppress the dream state at all. The PDR inexplicably failed to list the side effects of home-brewed tropical berry extracts; he was working blind, and he hated it.

"I… maybe," the Skipper conceded.

"It's something to consider. But let's leave that as a last resort," the Professor said briskly, closing the subject.

"We appear to have any number of last resorts, and no first ones," Mr. Howell said.

"You're not wrong," the Professor admitted grimly.

They all looked at each other, and there didn't seem to be much left to say.

OoOoOoO

Given the amount of random… _stuff…_ that washed up on their shores from the shipping lanes, the Skipper sometimes wondered if anything ever actually made it to its intended destination. Their latest find, a crate full of some sort of rubberized fabric, had beached itself in the lagoon that morning. It was Japanese, judging by the characters stenciled onto the side of the crate, but none of them knew enough to translate the label, and the material's intended purpose was, therefore, something of a mystery. The Skipper was finding it hard to dredge up the energy to care.

"It's just possible… yes, I think it just might work," the Professor said, his eyes alight as he twisted a swatch of the fabric in his hands.

"What might work?" Mary Ann asked.

"I think this material could save us! I've been testing its properties, and it's definitely waterproof. We might be able to use it to build an inflatable raft that would be sturdy enough to carry us into the shipping lanes! If you can stitch it to the correct size and shape, and if I can then devise a method of sealing the seams to render them airtight, this could get us rescued!"

"Oh, Professor, how wonderful! I'll need some help drawing a pattern; I've never tried to tailor a boat before," Mary Ann said, then chuckled. "But I'll try! 'Sew, sew, sew your boat,' right?"

The Professor laughed. "Indeed! Perhaps some of the native tree gums would prove sufficient to waterproof the seams once completed. I'll begin running experiments immediately."

"Do you really think we can sew this stuff into an actual boat?" asked the Skipper, a bit dubious. "The sharks ate the first raft we tried to build, and that was solid bamboo."

"I've developed shark repellent since that attempt," the Professor said casually. "I'm certain that we'd be safe from piscatorial menaces. This is the best chance we've had in a long time to escape. Mary Ann, why don't you go tell the others what we've found?"

"I will. Oh! They'll be so excited!"

"Skipper," the Professor began in an undertone as Mary Ann hurried away, "I don't want to say anything in front of anyone else, but this could be the key to helping Gilligan, too."

"What do you mean, Professor?"

"I mean constructing and utilizing this raft could very well distract him from his current morbid obsession with his experiences with Kinkaid. If given a new project upon which to focus, he just might be able to break free from the dreams."

"Oh, I get it," the Skipper said, with a dawning hope on his face that was almost painful to see. "If he's busy building the raft, he won't have time to be worrying about anything else."

"Yes, and in addition, once the raft is completed, the two of you are the only ones with any hope of successfully navigating from here to the shipping lanes. He's dreaming of committing murders, but in real life, he'll be helping to save us. There's a good chance that it could help restore his mental image of himself."

"I sure hope you're right, Professor," the Skipper said. "Come on, let's get this stuff back to camp. The sooner we start, the sooner we'll get home." And maybe, just maybe, it would bring his friend home, too.

OoOoOoO

For a while, it really did seem as though any number of prayers had been answered. The Professor, after testing a number of tree gums, singly and in concert, did manage to concoct a sealant that not only rendered the seams airtight, but—and this was the crucial bit— _remained_ airtight for more than a couple of days. Once he was satisfied with his efforts, he and Ginger worked together to brew up a large kettle-full of the stuff, as she chanted the 'Double-double, toil and trouble' scene from the Scottish play with her very best and most witchlike cackle.

For the actual construction, the Skipper had worked with Mary Ann to draw a pattern that could create a raft similar in structure and dimensions to those he remembered from the Navy, and then had helped her adapt said pattern to fit their limited supply of fabric.

"I'd say that once it's finished, we should give it a float test, and a few dry runs around the lagoon, weighted down the way it would be if we were all onboard," he said, finally, looking at their handiwork. "I'm not taking anything on faith, not this time, but I think it'll work."

"How're we going to do a _dry run_ once it's in the lagoon?" Gilligan asked, passing by just in time to hear. He was carrying several buckets of tree sap on a yoke, and he grinned a bit. "Come on, Skipper, even I know that a boat can't stay dry in the water."

"… Ah-ah! Dry on the _inside_ ," the Skipper shot back. "How's that, wise guy? Get moving before I give you a float test of your own!" The words themselves sounded somewhat harsh, but the badly concealed elation in his voice gave it the lie. If Gilligan was feeling well enough to bust the Skipper's chops a little, things were getting back to the way they were supposed to be.

The Professor had, it seemed, been right. Gilligan had thrown himself into the raft preparations with all of his usual enthusiasm, and if that included his usual levels of disaster, for once nobody was about to complain. He'd tapped and retrieved enough sap to waterproof an aircraft carrier, and if he'd spilled a few quarts here and there, (and there, and there, and there,) well, there was plenty more where that came from. He'd carved a new set of needles from bone when Mary Ann had discovered that the fabric could not be pierced with what she had. He'd begun drying fruit with which to provision the craft when she set sail. He answered when spoken to, and had even, on _several_ occasions, initiated conversations that did not involve requesting instructions or clarifications thereof.

And the raft, when completed, was 'a thing of beauty and a joy forever,' as the old saying had it. Large enough for the seven of them and some supplies, ("But no gold this time, all right, folks?") and they had jury-rigged a lightweight bamboo-framed canopy to keep them out of the sun at least part of the time.

The Professor folded his arms. "The next logical step would be to calculate the combined weight of both ourselves and our provisions, load the raft with rocks of the same weight, and leave it in the lagoon for a day or two. Not to malign your handiwork, girls, or your design, Skipper, but I'd just like to make absolutely certain that it can support us for an extended period of time."

"No offense taken," the Skipper said. "I was about to suggest pretty much the same thing. If we need to fix something, I'd rather find out about it now."

"Yes, and if I've miscalculated the poundage the raft can carry, far better to discover that now. The combined weight of the seven of us _should_ fall within the acceptable limits, but it's going to be a close thing."

"Six," Gilligan said quietly. "That'll give you a little extra room, anyway."

"What?" said Skipper.

"I said 'six.' I'm not going."

"You most certainly are, and that's an order!"

"Gilligan, be reasonable. You and the Skipper are the only ones with any relevant experience. You're vitally important to the success of this expedition."

Gilligan quirked an eyebrow. "You're going to pole this thing out of the lagoon and let it drift into the shipping lanes. I'm pretty sure the Skipper can handle that without me."

"We're not just abandoning you here," Mary Ann insisted.

"No, you're not. You're letting me stay. Big difference."

"But _why_?"

He looked away, into the trees. "I can't hurt anyone here," he said simply.


	7. Chapter 7

The Skipper, standing in the waist-deep water, manhandled a sack of rocks into the raft with a controlled fury completely out of proportion to the task. It was already loaded with casks of fresh water, bags of dried fruit and other basic necessities, and five other sacks of rocks, each labeled with the initials of the person it represented. While it had been necessary for the Professor to know what each of them weighed in order to create their stony surrogates, by popular request the paper on which the statistics had been documented had been burned as soon as the dummies had been created.

"Sorry, Skipper, but could you move 'Mary Ann' to your other side? I think it'll balance better," the Professor said, squinting at the arrangement.

"Sure thing," the Skipper grunted, and complied. The 'Skipper' sack was at the bow, counterbalanced by the water casks at the stern.

The Professor was taking his time trying to figure out the best way to arrange the other five. It was either the best or the worst possible distraction for the Skipper; he wasn't sure which. On the one hand, it needed to be done. And carting about large bags of rocks was, one could hope, exhausting enough that the Skipper would need to concentrate on what he was doing, instead of what he was _not_ doing, which was continuing to fight with Gilligan over his decision to exile himself.

On the other hand, it was rather rubbing his nose in the fact that he had, at least so far, lost that fight, and he looked ready to explode. "I think that's sufficient for now," said the Professor. "It's fairly evenly balanced. We can come back and check on it tomorrow to see how it's held up."

The Skipper nodded, grimly, and turned away from the raft, which, so far at least, was floating perfectly well. No bubbles indicating leaks from the seams, and not riding too low in the water for safety. It would have been nice to have been able to feel triumphant over that. He waded back to shore.

"Skipper… we'll just do what we'd agreed to do with Eva Grubb," the Professor said softly. "Once we've been picked up, we'll come back for him. With competent psychological experts."

That had been intended to soothe; it failed miserably. "No," the Skipper said, eyes blazing. "We won't. Get out another bag. He's about one-twenty; can't be more than that, not with the way he's been eating lately."

"Skipper—"

"Fine. I'll do it myself," he snapped. He shook out a sack, placed it in the basket of the scale, and began to fill it with rocks. "We're not— mmph— leaving him here. He's my crewman—ugh—and you never—oof— leave a man behind." Punctuating the noble sentiments with a few low-pitched grunts, he heaved the last sack into the raft, which settled a few inches deeper into the water. "There. _Now_ we can just leave it to see how she holds up. In the meantime, Professor, you go brew up that Mickey Finn, after all."

"Skipper, are you sure that's a good idea?"

"No. But I am sure that leaving him here is a bad one." The Skipper's face set. "I'm the captain, and this isn't up for debate. He's coming along where I can keep an eye on him, and make sure he doesn't do anything… stupid. If I have to truss him up like a Thanksgiving turkey to keep him onboard, then that's what I'll do. He's coming."

The Professor didn't say anything. The Skipper was probably right to fear…what he obviously feared. That said, the notion of setting off for the open sea in a homemade rubber raft while carrying a man either drugged into insensibility or tied hand and foot had disaster written all over it.

"We have a little time," he said, finally. "After our experiences with the tree-sap glue, I want to wait at least three days before entrusting this vessel with anything more valuable than a few sacks of stones. Preferably longer. We'll talk to him again. Skipper," he hesitated. "You know we'll all do everything we can."

OoOoOoO

Talking to him again, it turned out, didn't work any better than it had the first ten times they had tried. No argument could get very far when one of the main participants refused to do his share; variants of 'no,' without reasons or explanations, heavily garnished with stubborn silences, did nothing but lead them around in circles. By the end of one such, the Skipper's face was getting red, but he kept his voice sweetly reasonable. The way he always did before blowing his stack. "That's enough. You're coming back to civilization with us, and that's an order, so get used to it!"

"And then what?"

"What are you talking about now?"

"Say I do come back to civilization with you. What then? Do you lock me in jail with the rest of the murderers or in the nuthatch with the rest of the lunatics? It's got to be one or the other, right?"

"For the millionth time, you idiot, you're _not_ a murderer. And you're doing a pretty good job of driving _me_ crazy, but you're not a lunatic, either."

"If I'm not a kook or a killer, then it seems to me that I have the right to decide for myself where I do or don't go. And I'm staying here."

"You're my crew, and these people are our passengers. You have a duty to help me see to it that they get home safe."

"…A duty? Skipper, I've done _everything_ I'm supposed to do. I've done all my work. I've tried my best to keep my dumb dreams from bothering anyone else. I haven't complained, not even once! I've _done_ my duty, Skipper, and now you're going to be rescued, and that's great. I _want_ you all to be rescued," he said, and swallowed hard. His voice wavered as he continued. "But I'm _tired_ , Skipper. I just… I'm too tired. I… I can't do this anymore. It hurts too bad. I just want it all to be over with, Skipper; I can't take much more of this. I'm not brave like you. I can't. Please, can't it be over? Please?"

It took the Skipper a long moment to realize that Gilligan was asking him for permission to die.

His first reaction was horror. His second was a twisted sort of relief. If Gilligan thought the Skipper was ever going to grant that permission, he had another think coming.

"No," he said. "No, it can't 'be over.' I don't ever want to hear you talking like that again, you hear me? And another thing; we've still got a job to do. We're not done until our passengers are back at the marina in Honolulu, and that means you're still on the clock."

It wasn't working, and he could tell it wasn't working. He gritted his teeth, and pulled out the big guns. God knew the last thing the poor guy needed was something else to feel guilty about, and this was more than a little below the belt, but the Skipper was genuinely desperate. "Besides. If you don't go, none of us do. That's what we said when the Professor got stubborn, that's what we said when Ginger did, that's what we say now. You can come, or we all stay."

That hit home, as he'd known it would. He watched his first mate's eyes clouding over as the rack in his soul twisted a notch tighter, and he hated himself for it, but it was the only shot he'd had left in the locker.

"You win," Gilligan said, after a while. "We'll get them safe to the marina."

"Gilligan—"

"I said you win, okay?" he said sharply. "I'll do what I gotta do."

"Okay, good," the Skipper said, trying to sound normal. "That's settled, then. We're going to need you out there."

Gilligan snorted. "Yeah, like a fish needs a scuba tank. Who do you think you're kidding?" He kicked at the sand. "I just mess everything up. I was a menace _before_ Kinkaid, and that was just by accident."

"What makes you think that?"

"Not just what I think. You think so too! When we first landed here, every night you'd hand me a gun and tell me to stand guard. You wouldn't do that now, would you?"

"…No," the Skipper admitted. "No, little buddy, I wouldn't. I'd be too afraid that you'd go and clean the wax out of your ears the hard way, and I'm not letting that happen."

Gilligan looked away, which was admission enough to be going on with. "Okay, Skipper," he said quietly. _Six lives outweigh one,_ the Professor had said. _You win,_ Kinkaid had said. _You'll be rescued, all of you. I swear it._ And he'd replied, _I'm what you made me be_ , and then there had been blood. So much blood. "Okay. You win. You'll be rescued, I swear it. I'll be what you need me to be," he said softly, and he walked away before the Skipper could ask him what he meant. But he _walked_ ; he didn't run. Maybe that was enough to be going on with, too.

OoOoOoO

The Professor found him watching the raft that evening.

"She's looking real good," Gilligan said. "No leaks or anything."

"I'm cautiously optimistic," the Professor admitted. "It's still a gamble, but I believe it's one worth taking."

"You're not sure we'll make it all the way to the shipping lanes? I thought you had figured out how far we could get and how long it would take."

"I did. My calculations show that, barring unforeseen circumstances, we can reach our intended coordinates before our supplies run out. But there's always risk in undertakings such as these."

Gilligan bit a knuckle thoughtfully. "Huh. What if… what if I took her out by myself? And then whoever I find can come back for you guys."

"Absolutely not," the Professor said. "That's preposterous. We'll share the dangers, just as we always have."

"What's preposterous about it? I'm a lot lighter than any of you except Mary Ann, and definitely a whole lot lighter than all seven of us." He looked up. "Six outweighs one, right?"

"What?" The phrase was seared into his memory… but Gilligan had been asleep, hadn't he?

"Kinkaid said that's what you said about being rescued when you gave him that fake map. Six outweighs one."

"He would," the Professor said with real hatred. "Forgive me. But please, you must know that I didn't mean it. I was simply trying to convince him that I was coldblooded enough to take his part."

"I know you didn't mean it; as soon as he told me about it I figured that it had to be some sort of sneaky trick. But that doesn't mean that you're not _right_."

"Of course it's not right. We're not—"

"No, don't you see? This'll work, I know it will! Without all that extra weight, the raft could carry lots more water, and so I'd have a better chance of making it to the shipping lanes before it ran out." His eyes lit up in a way the Professor had almost lost hope of ever seeing again. "I could get her there, I'm positive I could, and then everyone would be saved!"

It was, the Professor had to admit, logical. Unacceptable, but logical. "No, that's ridiculous. It's far too dangerous."

"How come it's too dangerous for me, but not for all seven of us?" Gilligan cocked his head quizzically. "Wouldn't it just be seven times more dangerous if we all went? And with seven times _less_ food and water?"

Three years of trying to teach his young friend the rudiments of reasoned debate and scientific thinking. He had to choose _now_ to suddenly become good at it? "There's safety in numbers," the Professor said firmly. "We can take turns rowing, and take turns keeping watch for ships. No one person could ever have the requisite stamina to maneuver the craft indefinitely."

"So I'll pin a note to my shirt. That way, if I fall asleep and someone finds me, they can just read the note. And when I wake up I can start paddling again."

"That's hardly a viable solution. Note or no note, when you fell asleep, you'd run the risk of drifting completely off course. This is a two-person job, at the very least."

"Nobody else knows how to navigate besides Skipper, and you'll need him here. Besides, a cask of water the size of Skipper could get me most of the way to Hawaii." He smiled, reconsidering that last. "Heck, I bet it could get me most of the way to China. This'll _work_. I know it will."

The Professor shook his head. "We'll have to discuss this with the others," _so the Skipper can bring you to your senses,_ he thought. "And in any case, no one can go anywhere for at least a few more days while I make certain that the seams are holding. Until I'm convinced that the vessel is seaworthy, it's a moot point."

"No, it's not; it's a raft!"

"…That too. Come on, let's go back to camp," the Professor said.


	8. Chapter 8

The Professor checked the raft the next morning. Something must have disturbed it in the night, he thought; the 'Skipper' bag was missing. A bit of investigation located it at the bottom of the lagoon; it must have fallen overboard, the Professor thought. There was really no way he'd be able to retrieve it himself, and he made a mental note to return with additional hands.

Aside from the man overboard, the raft looked to be in good order. No leaks. The other six sacks had been disturbed as well, though; they seemed to have been wedged closer together. The 'Ginger' sack was practically on top of the 'Mr. Howell' one. The 'Mary Ann' was in grave danger of being crushed by the 'Professor' surrogate, 'Mrs. Howell' was nearly inside the water cask, and the last-minute 'Gilligan' sack, lying flat in the middle of the raft, was almost certainly being stepped on by the others.

The Professor frowned. He was not entirely sure what he was seeing, and nothing was yet certain, but he was beginning to have a bad feeling about this raft.

OoOoOoO

"I still say it makes more sense if I take her out myself. I'm the lightest, so I can carry the most water."

"And I say that you're not going by yourself, so just forget it. That's an order. Who's the commanding officer around here, me or you?"

"Just yesterday you were turning yourself inside out trying to get me to go at all. So I'll go. What are we still arguing about? All I'm saying is that we should do it the _smart_ way."

"And all _I'm_ saying is that if you don't shut your mouth, I'll do it for you. Coconuts. Now. Get moving!"

Gilligan shrugged and turned to the indicated tree, ready to climb. The faded remains of a brownish-red handprint were still just visible on the tree trunk. Gilligan looked at the print with an odd, crooked half-smile, and he fitted his right hand against it. The Skipper's mouth twisted, and he pulled his knife out of his pocket.

"Move over," he said. "I'm getting rid of that."

"What for?" Gilligan pulled his hand away from the tree and wiggled his fingers. "I thought it was kind of smart. It worked, anyway."

"What worked?"

Gilligan rubbed his right hand over his left arm meditatively. "These. Marking a trail with handprints. It was actually sort of lucky he winged me when he did."

"I'd hardly call it 'lucky,'" the Skipper said. Images flashed across his mind like the devil's own movie theater. The gunshot. The splash as Gilligan had fallen into the water trough. The twisted pleasure on Kinkaid's face. And himself, standing helplessly— _uselessly_ —behind a bamboo grille.

"Well, no, it'll never beat checkers as a way of spending an afternoon, but in the long run it made everything easier. I'd been trying to shake him with backwards footprints, or breaking branches in the wrong direction, but he was just too good at tracking. I couldn't fool him like that." He slapped his palm decisively against the tree. "But these he followed without thinking twice. Right where I wanted him to go."

"You really want to leave reminders of getting shot all over the trees?"

"It wasn't a big deal," he shrugged, touching his upper arm again. "A little messy, but messy was all; nothing serious. Anyway, I've banged myself up way worse than that plenty of times. You can barely see where it happened anymore."

"No scars or anything?"

"Just a little bit of one," Gilligan said, pushing up his sleeve to prove it. The graze had indeed healed cleanly, and he was obviously having no trouble using the arm. "See?"

"Yeah, you're good as new. That was pretty lucky, I guess," the Skipper said slowly. "That's the only nice thing about getting wounded, I guess… hurts like blazes, but if you give it a little time, it heals over until you can't really tell that anything was ever wrong. You'll always remember—it never really goes away completely—but it doesn't have to take up every waking minute anymore."

The Skipper studied the handprint again. It still made him sick to look at them, and he knew he would take the memories of just how they had gotten there to his grave. But if the bloody signposts really were an intentional part of what he had to admit was a fairly clever trap, Gilligan was right. They weren't something to be hidden. They signaled strength, not helplessness. That gunshot had only missed doing real damage by a hair's breadth and the grace of God, and instead of panicking, he had used it to both lull his pursuer into a false sense of security and lure him to his death. His 'little buddy' wasn't so little as all that, not anymore.

"Something else I remember hearing," the Skipper continued. "When a person breaks a bone, they have to set it back in place, and cover it all in plaster to let it heal. It can take months. And it's a real hassle. But once the bone's knitted, the medicos say that it's actually stronger in the place that was broken than it had been to begin with."

Gilligan looked at his scarred arm, then back to the Skipper, and it was obvious that—for once—he did not need the metaphor spelled out for him. But instead of answering the real question, he only rolled down his sleeve and grasped the trunk with hands and feet, starting upwards as nimbly as a monkey. "Right. Coconuts. Now. Better get moving," he said briskly.

"Is that all you have to say?" Exasperated, the Skipper put his hands on his hips and looked up into the tree.

"No, I guess not," Gilligan said thoughtfully, inching himself up a bit closer to the crown.

"Well? What is it, then?"

"Look out below," he said, and dropped a coconut, which missed the Skipper by a comfortable margin.

OoOoOoO

Mary Ann folded a blouse and placed it neatly in her suitcase, trying not to remember how many times she'd packed her bags… only to have to unpack them again. "I'm not even sure why I'm packing my clothes," she said aloud.

Ginger looked up from her own suitcases. "Why on earth would you say that?"

"Well, for one thing, that raft's so small you know that we're not going to be able to bring our luggage with us," Mary Ann said. "And for another, after all this time, I'm not sure I ever want to see these clothes ever again."

"I can't say I won't be glad to get a few new dresses," Ginger said. She flicked a rueful finger at the stenciled 'MINNOW' on her white sundress. "Especially dresses I don't have to make out of sailcloth and canvas."

Mary Ann laughed. "Oh, no—you definitely need to bring that one. You'll start a whole new fashion trend."

"Castaway Couture," Ginger said. "You're right; it could be the next big thing."

"Why not? When we get back, fashions will be completely different from when we left… _everything_ will be completely different from when we left."

Ginger put an arm around her friend. "Not the important things," she said quietly. "We'll need a few new dresses, and maybe a little time to readjust. But we're going to be all right. Just as soon as we get back… we're going to be all right."

" _If_ we get back," Mary Ann said, saying it for the first time.

"We will," Ginger said fiercely. "We're going to get on that raft, and it's going to take us home, Mary Ann. We've made it through everything else—storms and cannibals and enough coconut to last a lifetime. We survived everything this island could throw at us and we made it through unscathed."

"Did we?" Kinkaid's name was not spoken. It didn't have to be.

"Well…" Ginger bit her lip, conceding the point. "No, maybe not. Not yet. But _not yet_ isn't the same as _not ever._ And though the night is dark and chill, though for a time we may seem to lose our way for lack of a guiding star, we will stand united and await the morning sun."

Mary Ann recognized the 'film quote' cadence of that last bit, if not the quote itself. Trying not to sound too ironic, she asked, "What movie was that from?"

" _The Monster That Devoured Cleveland_ ," Ginger said. "I've been reciting that line to myself ever since the storm. Whenever it all started to get to me."

There were worse mantras a person could have, Mary Ann thought. Possibly not many worse movies had ever been made, but the sentiment was fitting enough. "I'm almost afraid to hope for the morning sun to get here," she admitted. "We've been disappointed so many times."

"I'm afraid _not_ to hope for it," Ginger said. "Even if it does mean getting my heart broken over and over when things go wrong… I can't let myself just accept that this is how things are going to be, forever, and that I can't change it. That scares me."

"I know what you mean," said Mary Ann. She glanced back at her half-filled suitcase. "Let's go check with the Professor as to how much we can carry with us," she said. "No sense in having to pack more than one last time!"

OoOoOoO

Down at the lagoon, the Professor was supervising the retrieval of the 'Skipper.' The flesh and blood Skipper had pulled the raft back to the shallows so that his surrogate could be repositioned. Meanwhile, Gilligan, wryly accommodating even as he made it perfectly obvious that he thought the others were being ridiculous, had taken a deep dive, to where, some unspecified number of fathoms down, (how many feet were in a fathom, anyway?) the 'Skipper' sack had mysteriously fallen. He tied a rope firmly around the sack of stones, and had then had swum back to the beach with the other end of the rope.

As they hauled the sack back to a depth where they could retrieve it, the Professor examined the raft again. Still no sign of leaks, but even without the 'Skipper' aboard, there was no doubt that the sacks were crowded together more tightly than he thought he remembered. But then again, that could easily have been a result of being towed to shore in a less-than-gentle manner. Not so easily dismissed was the fact that the raft was riding lower in the water than it had been. And that was with only six aboard.

"We're going to have to remove some of the supplies," he said, as the Skipper picked up the sack and waded towards him.

The Skipper dumped his surrogate back into the bow, and, ominously, the raft settled another couple of inches deep. "What do you mean, Professor? I thought you'd figured this thing out to the ounce."

"I did," said the Professor, as Gilligan splashed out to join them and see what all the commotion was about. "However, I seem to have miscalculated. You can see for yourself that the vessel is dangerously overweight."

The two men flicked an involuntary glance at Gilligan, who was not usually one to pass up so golden a straight line as that, but Gilligan was inspecting the raft with the blandest of expressions.

"As you can see, I'll need to recalculate. In the meantime, let's try removing some of the provisions and see if we can't rebalance the craft."

"The water's the heaviest, but it's also the most important," the Skipper commented, lifting out a box of coconuts. "A person can go for a good couple of days without food so long as he's got enough water."

"Not much good about days with no food," Gilligan told the bag of dried pineapple he was carrying back to shore, clearly enough that his companions could easily overhear him; quietly enough that they could pretend they hadn't. The other two opted for the latter choice.

They had removed about two-thirds of the food by the time the raft was rebalanced. It wasn't an encouraging development, but the Skipper gamely pushed the raft back out towards the deeper waters, paying out the line as it floated away, then waded back to the beach, tied the line to a handy log, and sat down.

Gilligan helped himself to a ring of the jettisoned dried pineapple and took a bite. He did not say, 'I told you so.' He did not say it quite loudly. Reaching back into the bag, he took out two more rings and handed one to each of the other men.

"Perhaps what we need is a second raft," the Professor said, toying with the fruit rather than eating it. "We'll get onboard the raft just as planned, and drag a smaller container behind us containing our supplies."

The Skipper nodded, because he didn't really want to think about it right now. Attaching multiple rafts together like the world's oddest choo-choo train was probably not feasible. But he didn't want to admit that seven people were not going to fit on the raft they had, either.

"We can remove the canopy, as well. It will make for a less comfortable voyage, but it will give us a few extra pounds," the Professor continued.

 _Great. Seven people, squashed cheek-to-jowl in a rubber raft with no food, and now no shade, either_ , thought the Skipper. _This isn't a rescue, it's a suicide pact._ He glanced at his first mate, still mock-casually eating pineapple. "We'll give that a try in the morning," he said firmly, and turned to Gilligan. "And quit eating the provisions! We're going to have to reload those onto the raft tomorrow, and we can't very well do that if you've hogged them all!"

"Mmrph-mrr," Gilligan mumbled, his mouth full, and retied the top of the only slightly lighter bag. "I mean, yes, sir. First thing in the morning."

Which was all very well and good, except for the fact that first thing in the morning, the raft wasn't there anymore.


	9. Chapter 9

The Professor went down to the lagoon at first light to see how the vessel he had privately dubbed the 'S.S. Moot Point' had fared with its newly lightened load. It was rare he was the first one up and about, but he'd had a troubled night; an unnerving theory was rattling around his brain, and he badly wanted to check the raft, and prove to himself that he was mistaken. The raft, however, was gone; nothing was left but a rope trailing into the water from where the Skipper had tied it the night before. Also missing were the containers of food and fresh water that had not fit onboard, the ones they had left neatly piled on the shore.

"No. Oh, no," the Professor breathed, splashing into the water and grabbing for the rope, in the insane hope that the raft would still be at the other end. It wasn't; the rope's end was fraying, either broken or cut. "No. No, no, no... He couldn't have. He _couldn't have_." He swam out deeper, to the approximate spot where he had last seen the raft. Sure enough, deep below, he could see a tangled heap of lumpy sacks, lying where they had been jettisoned. He swam back to shore with a speed that would have impressed an Olympian, and ran back to camp like a man possessed.

He threw open the door to the crew's hut. The Skipper was still asleep; the upper hammock was empty. "Skipper. _Skipper!_ Wake up!"

"Wha—what's wrong?" Skipper's voice was a bit groggy. "Professor? What's the matter? Why are you all wet?"

" _Where's Gilligan?"_

"What do you mean? He's right—huh?" The Skipper blinked, checked his watch. "I don't know. Probably getting firewood or checking the traps at the lagoon or something. Like always. What's going on?"

The Professor didn't answer him. With a muttered curse, he tore back the curtain on the wardrobe and rifled through the contents. Sure enough, Gilligan's possessions were still there, but that proved nothing except that he had chosen to abandon such valuables as a shirt with two carefully mended holes; one in the front, one in the back.

"Professor? What in blazes is going on? What are you looking for in there?"

"The raft is gone, Skipper. It's gone!"

"Gone? Well, why on earth would you be looking for it in our closet? That's just ridic—" The same realization hit the Skipper, and the blood drained out of his face. "You don't think he…?"

"He kept insisting that he be allowed to take the raft out alone," the Professor said. "He was quite adamant about it, in fact. Obviously, we both know how foolhardy a notion that was, but I fear that..." he shook his head, unable to finish the sentence.

"You 'fear' he went AWOL. You 'fear' he's trying to singlehandedly make it to the shipping lanes in that floating coffin," said the Skipper calmly. "You 'fear' he's trying to save us from ourselves."

"My God, Skipper, you sound like you approve!"

"Is that what you think?" The Skipper did not lose his self-control so much as he let the mask slip for a moment. The Professor took an involuntary step back, away from the raw pain in the sailor's voice. "Believe me, if he gets back here in one piece, I'm going to break him in half _lengthwise_. But he wasn't wrong about our chances. If we tried to pack the seven of us onto that thing, it wouldn't have taken us anywhere except Davy Jones' locker."

"That's just it, Skipper! I don't think it's going to prove capable of supporting one person for any appreciable timespan, and will certainly not remain viable all the way to the shipping lanes. Barring miracles, attempting to utilize that craft is nothing short of suicide!"

"And you think he _cares_? Where have you _been_ all this time, Professor?" The Skipper's clenched fists were shaking, just a bit. But he was still the captain, and his voice was steady. "Look. We won't say anything to the others; not yet, anyway. There's nothing any of us can do one way or the other, and there is always the chance that he'll make it back."

"Skipper…?"

"With all due respect, Professor, you've been wrong before. And he's good at what he does. Maybe the raft will stay together longer than you think it will. Maybe he'll find a ship in time. But touching off a panic won't do any of us any good. We'll keep this quiet, at least for today. That's an order."

OoOoOoO

Late that afternoon, the Skipper walked back towards camp, his feet dragging just a bit. He didn't want to have the conversation he knew was waiting for him when there were only six people at the table that night. More than that, he didn't want to see that vacant seat either, or the empty hammock. Unabashedly stalling for time, he detoured to the well to get a cup of water he didn't especially want.

Gilligan was there, drawing up a bucket. "Oh, hey there, Skipper. Want a drink?" He held out the dipper casually.

"Yeah, thanks, little buddy," he said, unthinkingly, and took a sip.

And promptly spewed it back out in a fine spray as the double-take of all double-takes all but choked him. "Gilligan! You're alive!"

Gilligan, wincing, wiped his face with his sleeve. "Not for long, looks like! What're you trying to do, drown a guy?"

In one motion, the Skipper threw down the coconut-shell dipper, grabbed a double handful of red shirt, and hauled the smaller man up onto his tiptoes. "Gilligan, you idiot! What were you _thinking_? I ought to wring your scrawny neck!"

Gilligan, from his vantage point six inches away from that very red face, stared at the Skipper. He knew his captain inside and out; he could translate 'Skipper to English' in his sleep. This wasn't angry yelling. This was anything _but_ angry yelling, in fact. There were dozens of variations of angry yelling, ranging from the fairly innocuous _I-have-one-nerve-left-and-you're-getting-on-it_ , to the somewhat more upsetting _you-did-something-stupid-and-I-am-annoyed_ , all the way up to the genuinely terrifying _you-did-something-_ _ **bad**_ _-and-I-won't-stand-for-it_. That last he had never actually seen directed at himself, and he wanted to keep it that way.

There were also the various shades of friendly yelling, like _it's-us-two-against-this-crazy-world_ or _why-does-morning-have-to-come-so-early_ , and of teasing yelling that nobody could ever mistake for the real thing, (and he included under that heading even the nonverbal things like the friendly punch to the arm that could knock down a brick wall,) and all the threats of creative mayhem, the ones with about as much malice in them as a request to pass the salt. The Skipper wasn't the mushy type, and if you knew what you were listening to, and the words were always the least important part of it, a growled promise to break every bone in his first mate's body was both intended and understood as being downright affectionate.

This, however, was different. This, unless he was vastly mistaken, was _I-was-scared-out-of-my-wits-and-thank-God-you're-okay_ yelling. The kind where being taken by the shoulders and shaken until your teeth rattled was the equivalent of a bear hug. It had something to do with the way he held his shoulders, and the tension in his hands, and the tiny muscles around his eyes. And there had been a lot of that sort of yelling over the last month or two, but this was more intense, somehow. What was going on here?

The Professor burst out of the underbrush, with that same look of frenzied relief in his eyes, babbling something, but, honestly, Gilligan had other things to think about just then.

"Report! What in the name of everything holy is going on here? _What did you do?_ You might as well tell me the truth now; I'll have it out of you one way or the other!"

"Skipper—I'll tell you anything you want to know!" Whatever the Skipper had been scared about, it must have been awful. He looked like death warmed over, and there was just that hint of the faintest, tiniest catch in his voice. "But, Skipper, just one thing… first you gotta tell me what it is you're telling me to tell you, because I can't tell what you're talking about, and I can't tell what it is I'm supposed to be telling you 'til you tell me what it is!"

The Skipper let go of Gilligan's collar, his hands falling limply to his sides, and he closed his eyes for a moment in rapt gratitude. That was vintage Gilligan, all right. Logic was his servant, not his master, and just now, that brain-buster of a question was the sweetest sound he'd ever heard.

The Professor pushed the Skipper aside. Which, frankly, took some doing. "Where's the food?"

Gilligan blinked. Great, fantastic, the Professor had gone bonkers, too. Could this day get any better? "It's only four-thirty, so I don't think Mary Ann will have finished cooking dinner yet. Anyway, Professor, you live in the supply hut! It's all right there! If you don't want any of _that_ food, tell me what you _do_ want, and I'll try to get it for you, okay?"

A vein in the Professor's forehead was throbbing. "Not _that_ food. The supplies we'd prepared for our voyage. The ones we had to offload last night, remember? Where are they?"

 _That_ was what this was about? Who got this wound up over a few bags of pineapple? "I put them in the storage cave," he said carefully. "So Gladys and her friends couldn't steal them overnight. They're all safe and sound. But it's okay; I can go get them and put them back on the beach right this minute if you'd rather…"

"Never mind the food!" The Skipper took back control of the conversation.

"Me? You're the ones who came charging in here like your shorts were on fire!"

"Belay that! I'm talking about the _raft_ , you idiot! What happened to the raft?"

"What _about_ the raft?" The lack of comprehension was too genuine to be doubted. "I didn't know anything happened to it! It was fine last night!"

"Well, it's gone now!"

"…Gone?" A hundred different kinds of shock and dismay kaleidoscoped across Gilligan's face, before giving way to offense. "Well, _I_ didn't take it! I couldn't, not yet!"

"What do you mean _yet_?"

"Well, I was still waiting for you guys to admit that it made the most sense for me to go; and I figured it would take you at least another day or two to let 'smart' beat out 'stubborn'."

The Professor ignored the implications of that. "Then where were you all day?"

"Gladys swung by and picked me up; I was with her!"

The Skipper exhaled sharply. "And it didn't occur to you to _mention to anyone_ you were going to wander off with a monkey before we all had heart attacks?"

"I never got the chance. See, when I said she 'swung by and picked me up,' I meant she really 'swung by and _picked me up!'_ I only just this minute got away. Trust me, by this time, I know all about arguing with big, strong, stubborn gorillas, and I never win!" He rolled his eyes in remembered irritation. "Albert and his wife Charlene are even _worse_."

Albert, the Professor thought he recalled, was the gorilla who had attempted to romance Mrs. Howell. Or possibly the one who liked to throw hand grenades. It didn't really matter which. Given the previous comment, whether or not Gilligan was including the various human primates on the island under the 'stubborn gorilla' heading was another question, but not one he felt any real inclination to explore. Just at the moment, he was too busy feeling his muscles turn to jelly as the adrenaline slowly drained out of his system, leaving both a profound relief that his friend was safe, and a morbid curiosity regarding the hypothesis that had sent him to the lagoon that morning in the first place. "Do you happen to know what happened to the scraps from the raft?"

The Skipper gave him an odd look. "Sure, they're in our hut. I kept them in case we sprang a leak and needed to patch something. The glue's there, too. Did you want that?"

"No, not yet," the Professor said. "May I see them?"

"Yeah, of course," the Skipper said. "Come on; let's go back and I'll get them for you."

They walked back to camp; the Skipper bringing up the rear, casually keeping his first mate in his line of sight at all times, still not quite able to believe that he was there at all.

Inside the hut, the Professor lit the candle. Unnecessarily, because the sun was shining through the open windows, and the hut was as bright as it ever was. The Skipper and Gilligan traded another odd look; Gilligan just shrugged and retrieved the box of scraps. "Um, Professor… I don't think there's enough here to build a new raft," he said carefully.

No, there wasn't. There wasn't enough there to build a pocket handkerchief. The Professor carefully picked out the largest swatch, about the size of his palm, and held it an inch or two away from the flame. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, the fabric contracted, becoming stiffer and shinier, until it was about the size of his thumb.

He nodded, looked up. "As I suspected. The Japanese characters on the outside of the crate must have indicated that this is some sort of heat-sensitive packaging material. The raft was neither stolen or sabotaged—it shrank."

"It _shrank_?"

"Yes, Skipper. Do you remember, that first day, how we were able to load the food, the water, and the weighted dummies with no difficulty? There was ample room for all of it."

"Er… yes, I guess so," the Skipper said.

"After a day of being exposed to the heat of the sun, the raft began to contract, displacing the dummies, and eventually, it could no longer support the weight of the supplies as well as ourselves. The rate of shrinkage seems to increase exponentially as time goes on; I suspect that by the time the raft sank under the weight of the remaining cargo, it was approximately the size of a milk crate, if not a soap dish."

The Skipper swallowed hard. "So if we'd tried taking her out to sea, you think she'd have kept shrinking? With us on board?"

"I'm certain of it. The rays of the tropical sun, coupled with our body heat, would have kept the fabric of the raft at a temperature high enough that continued shrinkage would have been sadly inevitable. We would have drowned."

"It sure is a good thing we left her out in the lagoon for those extra couple of days while we made sure that sealant you made was gonna hold," Gilligan said, round-eyed.

The Skipper looked at him. "You mean, it's a good thing we left her out in the lagoon while we were arguing with you, little buddy! Your mule-headed stubbornness saved us all!"


	10. Chapter 10

The Professor had gone to break the bad news to the others; that there was no raft, there would be no rescue, and there would be tears. The Skipper usually handled that sort of thing himself—he was the captain, and it was his responsibility—but not this time. The Professor had insisted that this time, it was his fault, that he should have experimented with the cloth more extensively before getting everyone's hopes up, and therefore any blame or recriminations should fall on his head. And the Skipper let him, because he was still numb and dazed from something that needed a better word than mere 'relief.'

Gilligan glanced up at the big man. He looked… well, he looked _old_ , was the only word he could come up with, and even that wasn't really right. He looked drained, and broken, and hopeless. The poor guy must have been going through hell, and by this stage of the game, Gilligan was more than familiar enough with the scenery on that particular journey to understand, and to pity.

"Hey, Skipper?"

"Hmm?"

"Let's head down to the lagoon, okay? It's going to get real hot around here in about two minutes."

The Skipper just shrugged.

"Come on. We've got to retrieve the stuff that was onboard, anyway. I'll dive for it, and you help me haul it in. Even if the food's no good anymore, we could reuse the crates and stuff."

"Oh, all right," he conceded, and they headed down the well-worn trail.

Neither of them ever remembered much about the next hour or so. Gilligan dove for the bottom, over and over, coming back each time with either an object in hand, or a rope tied to something too heavy for him to budge alone, and in between, he chattered. About anything, or nothing, round and round, pausing strategically every little bit and looking expectantly to the Skipper. Even he didn't really know what he was talking about, at least partially because not even he was really listening, but he got an 'Uh-huh,' or something similar, every time he stopped for a breath, and that was a start. He figured that it was all pretty much like this salvage operation, except conversation was the rope they were using. He would dive into that big empty sea behind the Skipper's shadowed eyes, over and over, and he would trail words, wrapping them firmly around his big buddy, until he had enough leverage to haul him back out and safe onto the shore.

He'd tied the rope—the real one—to one last sack. "I think this is it; after this we're done," he said as cheerfully as he could. And the Skipper just nodded, braced himself, and gave it a mighty heave. And the sack came loose—not surprising; the sack only weighed one-twenty, more or less, and the Skipper picked up and tossed around that much on a regular basis—and freed something else.

A shiny gray object, about the size of a large mixing bowl, had been trapped underneath, and it bobbed to the surface. It was their raft, or, at least, what was left of it. Gilligan picked it up, and half-smiled.

"Hey, Skipper, look here! Not much good as a boat anymore, but maybe the girls would like it for a flower pot."

And that was the last tug he'd needed; the Skipper's face went stormy, and there was something alive in his eyes again. "I don't care if they do; I never want to see that thing again! Give it here!"

Gilligan did; the Skipper twisted it between his powerful hands until it tore. "Of all the dumb ideas I've ever—Sewing a raft! What were we thinking?"

Gilligan just shrugged. "Dumb ideas pan out sometimes," he said. "Our next dumb idea will be better, maybe. Let's… let's play checkers." There were any number of smooth beach stones scattered around, and plenty of bits of shell, too. They would do for the pieces, and as for the board, he could use a twig to draw a grid in the damp sand.

The Skipper looked as though he wanted to argue, but only for a moment. He gritted his teeth, then let out an exasperated huff of breath with a chuckle behind it, and sat down. "I guess it beats going back to camp."

"I'll say. Come on; I'll bet you my share of dessert that I'll clean your clock for you. You can even go first."

"Huh. I'll take that bet, little buddy," said the Skipper, and moved a shell. "I think there was a banana cream pie in the oven. Smelled pretty good."

"Well, then, I'll think of you while I'm eating it," Gilligan said cheekily, countering with a stone.

And the Skipper rolled his eyes, because he was trying to be normal, too, but his heart wasn't in the game. Neither game, actually. Not their familiar banter, and certainly not the checkers match, and it took every ounce of skill Gilligan had to lose in a manner that looked even vaguely believable.

In the middle of their third game, Gilligan, who was stretched out on his stomach, his chin propped in his hands as he considered the board, looked up at the Skipper and said, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Talk about what?"

"Come on, Skipper. It's _me_. You think I can't tell when you're upset? I'm being a complete pain in the neck and you haven't even whacked me once."

The Skipper glared at him for a moment, then laughed. It was rueful and a bit pained, but it was real. "You're right, and you are, and maybe I ought to have!" He sighed. "Okay. Fine. You want the truth? Here it is. It's the raft. You would have been on that thing if I'd let you, and you would have _died_ out there. All alone. And I'm scared to death that you wanted it that way, all right?"

Gilligan hauled himself to a sitting position, hugging his knees, and looked down at the checkerboard. "I wasn't trying to get myself killed; I was trying to make sure you guys _didn't_. That raft wasn't going to fit us all even before it got shrunk," he said. "You know it wasn't. So if we all went, like the plan was in the start, we'll all have gotten drowned or sunstroked or something. Yeah?"

The Skipper nodded.

"Yeah. So I couldn't let that happen. We could have done like we did with that first raft, and just you and me tried to sail her back home, but that leaves everyone else here all by themselves, and I have to be honest… I don't think they'd make it without you to keep order." He made a face. "Mr. Howell would probably elect himself skipper, and can you imagine what a mess that would be?"

The Skipper could imagine it. It wasn't pretty.

"And I don't want to leave… no, it's more that I'm _afraid_ to leave. But if I went anyway, I could kind of make up for everything else I've done. I'd find someone to come save you all… or else I wouldn't, but at least the rest of you would be okay. Either way, you'd be saved. _I'd_ have saved you. I couldn't win, but I could figure out the best way to lose, see?" A shadow flickered through his eyes as the echo struck him.

 _Look, Kinkaid. I know I can't win here… So what I want to know is, how good is good enough? What do I have to do to make sure get my friends rescued?_

No time for that now, though. "I didn't mean to worry you, honest I didn't."

"When we saw the food was gone, we thought you'd taken the raft and snuck away."

"Aw, I wouldn't've done that, Skipper. Going AWOL would have been bad enough, but stealing the boat? That would have been piracy! Anyway, I wanted you guys to agree that I was doing the right thing. Remember the telephone wire? Besides, I wouldn't have left without saying goodbye."

"Saying goodbye? That's just it; you've been saying goodbye since the minute Ramoo left the lagoon! I'm just standing here, helpless, day after day, watching you kill yourself in slow motion. I don't know what to do anymore!" The Skipper looked away. "I can't let you do it, little buddy. I just can't. Maybe that's selfish of me. But that's how it is."

"I'm sorry, Skipper," he said. For once in his life, he seemed to be at a loss for words. "I wasn't trying to ki—I mean… not really; I... I just wanted to stop hurting all the time. I can hardly think straight, it hurts so bad. I didn't ever mean to hurt anyone else. I didn't mean to hurt _you_. I'm sorry."

"I don't want you to be sorry. You don't have anything to be sorry about," the Skipper repeated. He'd seen a rabbit caught in a trap, long, long years ago. It had chewed off its own leg in a desperate attempt to escape, and hadn't quite made it to freedom. He'd been remembering that rabbit far more often than he liked over the previous few months.

"I didn't know the raft was messed up. It looked fine. No leaks, no tears… I was only trying to do something _good_ and save us all. I thought the worst that could happen would be not finding anyone before I ran out of water, and I thought maybe I could turn around and come back if it started looking like that was gonna happen. I wasn't trying to get drowned," he said. "I didn't know it would shrink. I didn't, honest."

He picked up the torn remains of the raft, and considered them for a moment. Then his hands spasmed, and clenched so tightly around the fabric that his knuckles whitened. "I would have died," he said softly, wonderingly, looking at something only he could see. He'd never said it aloud before; perhaps he'd never let himself _think_ it, either. He'd talked about the danger the others had been in; he'd talked about his wrenching guilt over having killed a helpless man, and over having wanted to kill that man's equally helpless accomplice. He'd never quite allowed himself to admit the most obvious fact of all. "I'd have been dead. For keeps. He… he would have shot me. He really would have _shot me_." He looked up at the Skipper, and for the first time, there were tears in his eyes. "Why am I so bad, Skipper? What do I do that's so awful?"

"You don't do _anything_ , little buddy. This wasn't your fault!"

"No. It is. It must be. I must have done something to deserve it. It's the only thing that makes any sense. Because why else would this _keep happening?_ " The tears were running down his face in earnest now; he didn't seem to notice. "We were all in on trying to trap Rodriguez in that net, remember? But I'm the one he put up against the wall. Just me. He would have shot me if he hadn't been out of bullets… and Farrell! If his gun hadn't gotten wet, he'd've shot me too! I don't _understand_ , Skipper. I just _don't understand_. What's wrong with me? What do I do that makes everyone hate me so much? If someone would tell me what it is I'm doing, maybe I could stop. Cause I'm sorry! Honest, I'm sorry… and I don't mean it, whatever it is! I'll be good from now on, I promise… but you've gotta tell me how. Please?"

"You don't—Look. None of those things were your fault. None of them. Some people are just animals, Gilligan, and that's all there is to it."

"No, they're not. Animals are _nice_." He shuddered. "Animals don't take one look at me and decide that I ought to be the one to die, over and over and over..."

And the Skipper had nothing helpful left in him, no magic solutions to pull out of his back pocket, because at least part of what he was saying was nothing more than the simple truth. If there were prizes for bad luck, Gilligan would have walked away with first, second, _and_ third place, and probably ended up pocketing the honorable mentions as well.

Half the time it wasn't even his fault. They had met a lot of screwy characters since the wreck, and somehow, when it all hit the fan, as it inevitably did, a disproportionate amount of the fallout always seemed to land on his narrow shoulders. And it wasn't fair, and it wasn't right, and it said some pretty ugly things about God or Fate or whoever else was controlling them all. And the very fact that there usually wasn't much any of the others could do to prevent or soften any of it wasn't fair either.

So he gave up on words, gave up on talking, and just pulled the smaller man close. And held him while finally, _finally_ , he was able to let out the accumulated strain of the previous months. He cried for the blinding terror of the hunt itself, for twelve hours of running in pitch darkness, for the knowledge that it wasn't just his own life at stake, and for the excruciating realization that the only way to slay a monster was to become one. He grieved for the five endless minutes he'd spent bound to a tree facing an enraged dictator's pistol, and for half-crazed Japanese soldiers, gangsters, and native warriors. For hopes raised, only to be dashed, time and time again.

For a storm-wracked night, and three days adrift and helpless as their water ran low, ran out, and for the guilt he'd felt, looking at the five strangers forlornly huddled on the deck of the crippled Minnow. The ones he'd failed— no, worse; the ones he'd betrayed. For a woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a smile like the first crocus of spring, back in faraway Pennsylvania, whom he was beginning to more than suspect he was never going to see again. For three long years of being optimistic and silly and cheerful, because that was what other people seemed to need him to be, while the world fell apart around them. For all of the pain, and the shame, and the fear. The shoulder of Skipper's shirt got a little soggy, but it had been through worse. And there was no disgrace in it, because the top of Gilligan's hat got a bit damp, as well. But that was okay, too.

OoOoOoO

"Skipper?"

"Yeah, little buddy? What is it?"

"… I don't want to die, Skipper."

He kept his voice calm, even. "That's good. I don't want you to, either."

A long pause. "Skipper?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused. You know. Making everyone worry."

"Belay that. You didn't do anything wrong," he said, once more. He'd repeat it until Gilligan believed him, or until doomsday; whichever came first.

"I still can't figure it out. How to get back to being just me again. The me I was before all this happened." He was sitting cross-legged on the ground, his hands loosely on his knees, his posture a far cry from the defensive crouch they'd all gotten used to seeing.

"Huh. Well, you're not, and you're never going to be," the Skipper said slowly. "None of us ever are. You know I was in the Pacific theater during the big one. It changed me; I wasn't quite the same afterwards. And that was war; two sets of faceless men in uniforms. Not nearly as personal as a guy telling you to your face that he's going to kill you for no reason."

"He told me that he wouldn't really have done it. After he sprang the trap and he was hurt. He asked me for help, and he said he wouldn't have killed me for real."

The Skipper grimaced. "And you actually believed him?"

"Well, no. That was when I shot him. But what if I was wrong?"

The Skipper sighed, and flicked a finger at the mended rent in his friend's shirt. The one betokening the bullet that would have shattered his sternum. "You weren't," he said simply. "Look, the Professor told me all about that 'six is more than one' business. And you know what? You're right. Six lives saved is more important than one lost. It's just that you're looking at it backwards. You're not the 'one' here. _He_ was."

"Huh?"

"Let's forget about the whole 'self-defense' thing for a second, okay? I've been trying to hammer that one into your head since the start, and you still won't listen, so I'm going to backburner it for a minute. The plain fact of the matter is that you were under battle conditions, and the rest of your team was in danger. You saved six lives _by taking one_. If six is more valuable than one, you're on the plus side of the ledger."

Gilligan nodded slowly.

"You say that you're trying to get back to being yourself again. Seems to me that first, you've got to figure out who that is. And you can do that, but you've got to stop letting _him_ have any say in the matter. It's your choice, not his. The only one who gets to tell you who you are is you. It's your move."

 _Kinkaid, you told me that in this world there's just predators and prey. And I told you that I was what you'd made me be. And I was, then… but I can choose to be something else._

 _I_ _ **do**_ _choose to be something else._

"My move," he repeated aloud. He looked down at the forgotten checker board, and with a faint smile, picked up a stone. Jump… jump… jump… jump… and jump. Dropping the stone onto the cleared board, he squared his shoulders. "You're right. Let's go, Skipper. I got a lot to figure out, but it's time we went home, don't you think?"

"Sounds good to me," the Skipper agreed. He stood up and scuffed the makeshift checkerboard clean with his foot, scowling affectionately. At double or nothing stakes, he'd just lost about a week's worth of dessert privileges, and it was cheap at ten thousand times the price. It did, however, make him wonder a bit about their two previous games, both of which he'd won comparatively easily. "Wise guy. Come on, get the lead out!"

And it wasn't over, because nothing is ever that easy, and they both knew just how long a way he had to go. And no matter what anyone might have wanted, the scar was not going to fade from his arm, and the hole in his shirt was not going to vanish, and the memories were real, and lasting, and they had changed him in ways he was never going to be able to entirely undo. It had all happened, and a sojourn in hell leaves no one unscathed. But the rack that had been twisting his soul had loosened, just enough that he'd be able to work himself free of it. And, finally, he believed that he _could_ work himself free of it. It wasn't over. It wasn't even close to over. But there was, at least— _at last_ —the chance that someday it might be.

OoOoOoO

Sometime around two in the morning, the Skipper woke from a sound sleep. It was about the time the dreams usually struck, and he'd become grimly inured to the sound of moaning and thrashing coming from two feet above his head. But that wasn't what woke him, not this time.

What woke him was _silence_ , or the next best thing to it; Gilligan was deeply, peacefully asleep in his hammock. Lying still, comfortable and relaxed, his breath steady and even.

The Skipper smiled, and let himself drift back to sleep to the music of that rhythmic breathing. No cries. No dreams. For the first time in months, no pain.

It was a start.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Author's note: A lot of this story isn't fiction. Obviously, very few of us will ever have to worry about being chased around a desert island by a crazed hunter. And equally obviously, I took these characters to places that I suspect Sherwood Schwartz never intended them to go. But PTSD is real. Depression is real. Suicidal urges are real. And an appallingly large number of people wake up every day and have to deal with all of those things. If you've been there, you know, and if you haven't, you can't. So this is for everyone who wakes up every morning and makes the conscious decision to hang on for one more day. This is for the people who love them enough to stand by their side, which isn't as easy as it sounds. This is also for the people who hung in there as long as they could.


End file.
